


All This Ringing In My Ears

by shihadchick



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, First Time, Long-Distance Relationship, Losing Time, M/M, Memory Loss, canon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-23 12:20:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 34,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12507280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shihadchick/pseuds/shihadchick
Summary: Nick wakes up, and everything he knows has changed.A story about finding out what's important, falling in love, and discovering how to ask for what you wanted all along.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't feel any of the archive warnings apply to this story, and have added an additional content warning in the end notes just in case. If you have any questions about the content, or wish to suggest adding further warnings/tags please do let me know via comments or via this username at gmail.
> 
> Many many thanks to Folignos for the superlative and speedy beta; to the mod for running the Big Bang challenge and to my artist for being fantastic (and extremely patient).
> 
> Title is from Fall Out Boy; I couldn't resist.
> 
> ETA: Updated 14/1/18 to fix a paragraph eaten by a coding mistake; apologies!

2016

Nick's always been a morning person, so when he wakes up, he wakes up fast and alert. That means that he doesn't even have a hazy couple of seconds to relax and enjoy being able to just lie there, buried under a pile of warm blankets, because his very first thought is _what the fuck_?

He's confused for the first thirty seconds or so, hyperconscious that his surroundings aren't the slightest bit familiar. What the hell is going on, and where is he? He went to sleep the night before in his and Shawzy's place in Chicago, and this is definitely not there. They might've only moved in a couple weeks ago, but Nick's room doesn't get early morning sun, and he hasn't bothered getting a rug to lay beside the bed yet, he's just been walking barefoot on the wooden boards and occasionally thinking he should do something about that.

But that doesn't explain anything about where he is now.

Nick doesn't remember going out the night before, or hooking up or, like, whatever, so how is he waking up alone in some other guy's room? There's a doorway to one side with just enough of the tiled floor visible in the early morning light that Nick's just going to assume it's a bathroom, and he can see enough of the walk-in wardrobe to be very sure it's a guy's place; suits hanging neatly and a row of shirts all pressed. But Nick is very definitely alone, and he can't see a light or hear any noises suggesting someone else going through their morning routine. There's no indent in the pillow next to his head, either, which is about as much investigating as Nick can do without getting up.

Which is something he should probably do, he admits to himself, and pushes the covers off, climbing out of bed. He turns out to be just wearing sweats, still, and if the surroundings weren't so wholly unfamiliar to him then he would've thought they were the same ones he'd gone to bed in; worn-out old U of M sweatpants that could've come from the back of his dresser at any point from the beginning of his freshman year up till now.

The other door, unsurprisingly, leads to a hallway, and the hallway to a living room—and then Nick freezes, stunned into immobility for a long, horrible moment. Because all of a sudden, things do look familiar. That's his furniture, and his pictures of family and friends, and his favorite books on a shelf with some other knick-knacks.

And then he goes hot and cold all over with the adrenaline that dumps into his system at the combination of exultation and bone deep fear confirming that something is horribly wrong because that's a picture of him with the Cup, like what the fuck.

It's definitely him, it's definitely the Stanley Cup, and Nick has no memory whatsoever of ever even coming close to touching it. He might avoid most hockey superstitions, but he'd always kept that one, didn't want to touch it till he knew his name would be on it.

And all of that taken together suggests only one solution: this is his place, he just—has no memory of moving in. And—it doesn't look like Chicago outside. It doesn't look like Minneapolis, either.

Almost without admitting to himself what he's doing, and even though in the back of his mind he kind of knows what he's going to see, he goes to find the bathroom. He has to steel himself for a second before he can look in the mirror and, well.

He looks different.

Not much, just—a little older, a little more together, maybe, and apparently he has a beard now and that's kind of, well, okay, he thinks it's working for him, but what the _hell_ is going on? He's never heard of anyone getting a concussion like this. He must have lost at least, like. Six months. The fuck.

Nick wanders back to the bedroom just because he kind of doesn't know what else to do. There's a split second where he thinks about calling his mom, but he lets that idea go almost immediately, because all she can do is worry and that's the last thing he wants to do if he's having some kind of batshit amnesia problem.

The phone sitting by his bed isn't one he recognizes either, but his passcode is apparently still the same, and it opens right up in his hands.

The date is the first shock, and it's a big one. Nick's lost almost four _years_. And there's a lot of names he doesn't think he recognizes in his most recent messages, although, there's a few that he does; Shawzy and Saader and Bicks.

He sits down on the end of the mattress, just giving himself a moment to breathe and take this new information in. He stares blankly at the heavy curtains covering the window, not really taking in his surroundings and just tries to think his way through it. Years. More than three _years_ that he doesn’t remember in the slightest.

It probably should've been more obvious earlier, Nick thinks, before pushing himself to some kind of action. He gets up, phone still in hand, and goes to dig in the dresser- _his_ dresser, and comes out with an armful of workout shirts and polos with the Islanders logo plastered all over them. So. That explains why the view from his window doesn’t look like Chicago any more. Because he's not there. He wonders how long that's been the case—he clearly stuck with Chicago long enough to win a Cup with them, and fuck, how goddamn fucking unfair to forget that—and then he realizes, well, he can probably google that. It's only been four years, Google probably still exists.

It does, and it even looks pretty much the same, but the information it gives him is even more of a trip. He's been an Islander for two years, apparently, and he's signed with them for—a while. And for a lot of money. That probably explains why his suits are nicer. And the size of his apartment. Zoey must be back in Minnesota still, though, because he can't hear any nails clicking on the hardwood and he's been walking around enough that she'd be out investigating why if she was there. Nick swallows a little bubble of loneliness at that, and then forces himself to focus, stretching out on the bed again and going on his own little Wikipedia spiral to figure out just what the fuck is happening.

As far as he can see—and the blogs that come up when he searches the Islanders seem to confirm this—no one thinks he's hurt at the moment. No one's talking about a hit, or a blocked shot, or anything that could've fucked with his head this bad. And he's pretty sure if something had happened, well, he'd be in the hospital and figuring this out would be their problem, not his.

The smart move is to pull up the team docs on his phone and call and ask someone to come check him out. To tell him where he should go; it's not like Nick's suddenly incapable of calling a cab if he doesn't have a car here.

Nick…doesn't make that move.

Partly, he wants to find out a little more before he tries to tell anyone what's going on, because if someone said this to him he'd think they were fucking with him. This is too weird, this doesn't happen. And for some reason, the idea that someone else might know he has no idea what he's been doing for the past four years scares him almost as much as that gaping hole in his memory. So… hell, it's early, whatever. He can just—go back to sleep. Maybe this is all a weird bad dream, or maybe he's going to wake up just fine later this morning and this was just some kind of fever dream or whatever. Hell, maybe Nick started saying yes when guys offer him weed or pills or whatever nowadays, and this is some kind of extended drug trip? He feels pretty sober, though, so that seems… unlikely.

But the adrenaline crash is sort of dragging him down, and whatever his mind is aware of, his body is tired, and aching a little, like he's been blocking shots and skating hard and taking checks, same as the middle of any other season, so… he'll just go back to sleep, and deal with this shit in the morning. Fingers crossed it'll work out just fine.

Nick somehow, impossibly, actually does fall asleep again pretty easily, curled up under the pile of blankets on his bed, heavy enough to offset the way he likes to keep it cool in his apartment, the thermostat set at an easy sixty degrees even in winter.

When he wakes up for the second time, he does remember waking up around dawn, but—that's it. That still just joins up seamlessly with taking the dogs on a run and staggering upstairs with Shawzy, pouring sweat and complaining about how he wanted a beer and Shawzy had fucking stolen his last one, and then he'd gone to shower, and laid down for a short nap and—four years later, boom, there he was.

Nick thought about it for a second longer and decided he was, in fact, still a little pissed about the beer thing, because he was pretty sure that Shawzy wouldn't have replaced it. Not that he could exactly bring it up at this late date.

And Shawzy was a fucking Hab now apparently, he remembered belatedly. It had been yet another discovery during that increasingly horrified spin through article after article, and he'd been holding his breath a little every time he looked up one of his friends because shit, Nick's seen enough movies where this is the point where you find out that someone's just—gone. But everyone he cares about seems to be okay; his last set of messages with his parents had been about as boring and typical as ever, and Tyler's working in Minneapolis and sending him dumb chirps about country music. So at least there's nothing too terrible that he's forgotten about there.

Looking up his career history had felt weird but been kind of satisfying. Nick only remembered the first few games of that post-lockout season, and that had apparently been when they'd won the Cup, so no wonder he'd looked pretty much like he expected to in that picture. They'd gone right back to the conference finals the year after, too, and then the Hawks had won again in 2015. Not that Nick had been there for the last one, and that hurts a little, even though maybe it shouldn't, since it isn't like he even remembers the first time or knows what he's missing out on. He doesn't even recognize the names of most of the guys playing for Chicago now, though. Bicks is in Carolina and Andy's in Montreal and Sharpy's in Dallas, and so's Oduya, and Saader—

Saader's in Columbus.

Which is fucking bizarre, because he might've only been playing with the guy for a couple months, but Saader always felt like one of the guys the front office were going to keep as long as they possibly could, a steal in the second round who was going to fucking kill it in the show. And Nick had looked up his stats, he'd done just that; he'd even made the fucking All-Star Game last year, which… way to go, Saader.

At least if he reads the schedule right he's probably going to get to see Saader before he sees anyone else he knows, since they're meant to be playing the Jackets in a couple weeks. That's something of a comfort, it gives him something concrete to look forward to.

And lying there dwelling on everything he doesn't know isn't getting Nick anywhere good at all, just—increasingly likely to be late for practice. And he has no idea how the hell to even get there.

Idly scrolling through his messages with teammates suggests that he catches a ride in with a few of the other guys sometimes, so crossing his fingers he's not going to be saying something that'll seem totally weird, he sends a quick text to Boychuk asking if he's driving in and can he pick Nick up too?

Boychuk replies reassuringly quickly with a "sure" and Nick's not sure how someone can sound laconic over text, but he's pulling it off, so. He'll just roll with that. It doesn't take him too long to find everything he'll need to take with him; his wallet and watch both exactly where he'd expect himself to have left them when he really looks around the apartment, starting to recognize himself in the way it's decorated and arranged. It's unfamiliar, yeah, but part of it just feels—right. He can at least understand that he's happy here, that this is what he wants. Even if he has no idea how he got here from where he was—it kind of seems logical, in some ways. His keys are hanging on the side board by a couple of coats and scarves, and going by what's on the keyring, he doesn't seem to have a car in the city.

That's probably understandable, Nick hasn't spent a whole lot of time in New York but he's heard it's a pain to deal with, and according to the Isles blogs he'd skimmed over the team has a car service to get them home after games, so he probably doesn't need to worry too much about any of that.

He can feel the temptation to take another deep dive on the internet to try and fill in some of his blank spots rising up again, so it's probably for the best that his buzzer goes off then, and Boychuk messages him to say he's downstairs.

Nick shrugs a coat on, checks himself in the mirror—still weird—and heads out, locking up behind himself. Who knows, maybe it'll all come back to him as soon as he sees his teammates. Or his new—well, his new-to-him locker room. Or—fuck, he just hopes he remembers fast. If only because trying to play when he's not sure exactly what systems the Islanders run is going to be tough.

And more than anything right now—Nick wants to play.

Because at least when he's got his skates on the ice, things make sense.

* * *

Nick manages to fake it well enough through the car ride and the pre-practice team meeting; it helps that at least he recognizes most of the coaching staff on sight, and more than a few of the Islanders. He has a bad moment when he clearly says something that Hamonic didn't expect while they're getting ready in the locker room afterward, but manages to play it off with a laugh, and he doesn't think Hamonic suspects anything. He's sweating pretty hard before they even get out onto the ice, though, that's for sure.

And it turns out that while hockey still makes just as much sense in his mind as it has ever since he was four years old and picking up the game for the first time, actually playing—shooting, passing, skating—is not exactly the same.

He should maybe have guessed this would happen, but he hadn't. Nick's older than he keeps thinking he is, and the beard isn't the only thing about his body that's different. He's built a little differently these days, he's put on more muscle than he used to—which is kind of awesome, not that he's going to let anyone catch him checking himself out in the mirror—and apparently he's learned a bunch of things in the last few years to improve his game, but what all of that means is that he steps out onto the ice and all of a sudden finds that his balance is a little off from what he's expecting. And his body wants to move one way while his brain wants to move in a subtly different way. He doesn't fall flat on his face or anything hideously embarrassing like that, but it's maybe closer than he'd like.

And of course, that's what people do notice.

"Okay there, Leds?" Capuano yells from center ice. "Lookin' a little dicey today, huh?"

"Ah, yeah, feelin’ a little off this morning, I guess," Nick replies, hoping he's a better liar nowadays than he used to be, too, because going bright red is—noticeable, when you're as white as he is. "Should be fine later," he adds, and the look he gets then is the same look pretty much every coach he's ever seen has worn at some time or another, the look that says he's not sure he believes him but he'll let it go for the moment. Nick bites his lip and tries to make himself just relax and figure it out.

By the end of practice, he feels like he's skating better again—he doesn't have that persistent, awful feeling of being just slightly off balance, anyhow—and no one is is giving him weird looks, although he had managed to do a lot of lurking in the back of the group before they started drills just to give himself more people to watch go first when he wasn't as sure about what he was meant to be doing.

They file back into the locker room in good order, and Nick's daring enough to try and join in conversation when anyone glances at him like they're expecting him too. It seems like they're used to him being quiet enough that most people don't bug him or expect him to say a whole lot, and just like that, Nick gets through his first day with the Islanders. Well, his first day for the second time, anyhow.

* * *

They've started the season on the road a lot and it's—not going great, really. Nick's seen worse, and he's definitely played worse, but there's a difference between being the fourth or fifth guy down the depth chart and no one expecting a hell of a lot and being, well. The guy they're paying for top pairing minutes. And Nick's not terrible, he's self-aware enough to know that, but he's also not playing the way he should be, and by the time they get their home opener out of the way—and at least that one, they win, finally, even if it takes them OT and a helluva shot from Bailey to win it—well, by then he's not the only one who's noticed.

"You're just looking a bit off," the trainers tell him, and Nick tries not to get defensive about it, he _knows_ and unlike them, at least he knows why. "We want you to sit out a game, just rest up, take it easy in practice."

It has to help, Nick figures, that whatever he did, it happened after training camp, because they're all treating him like he's hurt, like he tweaked something in the preseason or aggravated an existing injury. And Hamonic is struggling too, so Nick doesn't stand out as badly as he could otherwise, he figures. But if he'd been playing like this in training camp he knows it'd be a whole different story. 

Sitting out the game against the Sharks gives him time to do that much, at least.

Watching his team lose without him is just as crappy a feeling with New York as it was in Rockford and Chicago and in college. And by that point, they're starting to feel more like his team for real, too. Nick's getting a better sense of where he fits in the locker room, who talks to who, what's normal for all of them, and as much as he misses the guys he's used to, well. He can see how he fits here, too.

Nick does feel guilty for being a little relieved at least that he can't blame himself for that loss, but at least being able to watch from the press box seems to have helped him get a better handle on what he needs to be doing to fit in their systems, and another three days of watching games he can't remember playing—and fuck is that ever trippy—every spare minute at home does more. If there's one thing Nick's already good at, it's video review. God knows he's had enough of it over the past three—fuck, _six_ —years.

He's more than a little worried he's going to slip up on _that_ at some point soon, but so far he's caught himself every time.

By the time he comes back into the lineup against Phoenix, something's settled, whether it's his sense of balance in the body he has now or just the confidence to know what he's doing, and he knows he's playing better again. Still not as good as he could be, maybe, but—better. No one says much of anything to him, but in its own way, that's a message, and Nick takes it on board, keeps working as hard as he can.

He's talked to his parents a couple times since whatever it was happened, although they've been quick discussions, or just a few messages in passing. He doesn't think they've noticed anything different about him, but he's been ducking calls from anyone else he knows who isn't in New York, just in case. He can pick up those other threads later, once he's got this under control. And who knows, maybe it'll come back to him again soon.

Nick's not sure if even he believes himself there.

But it's easier not to talk to anyone who could call him out or who might start worrying if they knew. He's a little lonely, sure, and apparently the only guy on the team who doesn't have a wife or girlfriend, which is a switch from spending years around single guys in college and the A, and so there's not a whole lot of time his teammates have to hang out with him. He finds himself drifting into conversations with Cizikas—Zeeker, Nick corrects himself—and Bailey more often than not, and apparently he and Matt Martin and his girlfriend used to hang out regularly too, so apparently Nick's just refined his habit of being an accidental third wheel even several years down the track. At least _that's_ something he's used to.

He's just starting to feel like he's finding his balance again, slipping back into the life he's built for himself and starting to feel like it's familiar, figuring that yeah, he's still playing and nothing bad has happened, other than their completely miserable fucking start to the season, although that's improving now too—

And then they take a roadie to Columbus and everything blows up in Nick's face again.

Well, sort of.

He's had a couple messages from Saader in the last week or so, although the Jackets have naturally been just as busy with their own training camp and season opening stuff as the Isles have, and Nick's replied to most of them, keeping things quick and light, and putting Saader off until later the time he'd pressed Nick to Skype him one afternoon if he had a chance. Nick's feeling a lot better about his ability to bluff his way through a conversation with Brandon if they're both there in person and there's, say, dinner to distract them both than he is over an internet connection.

He gets a message from Saader the day before the game which just says, "hey, we just got in, you guys staying the same place as last time?"

Nick has no idea where they stayed last time, although he's pretty sure it's the same place the Hawks always used to stay in Columbus too, so he just replies with the hotel name and a few of the smiley emojis that half his messages had been populated by when he'd scrolled through his phone.

He'd looked at the schedule enough to know the Jackets were in Detroit and probably getting in late that afternoon while the Isles have most of the day before in Columbus, and Nick can't deny that he's been dying to see Saader at least. If for nothing more than just the comfort of a familiar face who really is familiar. So yeah, if Saader wants to stop by on the way home when the Jackets get in, well. Nick's not going to say no to that.

He gets a message from Saader letting him know he's there that coincides perfectly with a knock on the door, because apparently Saader had no trouble getting up to the floor Nick's staying on without him having to call the lobby, so that's convenient.

Everything seems totally normal, except then he opens the door and Saader gives him the biggest smile Nick's ever seen on his face—except for maybe pictures of the Cup win, and Nick still hates that he doesn't remember that either, it seems so fucking unfair, he must have been so happy, right?—and Brandon steps inside and reaches behind himself to slam the door closed, and Nick reaches out to hug him, feeling needier than he'd like to admit and—

Saader gets his hands on Nick's face and pulls him into an entirely unprecedented and not at all platonic kiss, his hands drifting down Nick's sides and curving around to grab his ass, pulling him closer.

Nick chokes.

Brandon pulls back and frowns at him, some of the lightness leaving his expression. "Sorry, are you okay—? Nick?"

Nick's still staring at him, lips buzzing, trying very hard not to notice that his body is having a very predictable reaction to being kissed and touched like that—to, if he's being honest with himself, being touched like that _by Saader_.

He should confess, he knows. At this point he should really tell Saader what's going on and just—deal with all the questions and people being weird about it and god, so fucking many doctors that he's going to wind up seeing if anyone knows about this.

But if he can keep his mouth shut he's pretty sure that hanging out with Saader for a couple hours before curfew actually means getting to have sex with Brandon, and—

"No, I'm fine, sorry, caught my breath funny," Nick says, all in a hurry. He leans back in again, finds Brandon's mouth easily, slips him some tongue. He's not exactly proud of how fast he's decided to just go with this, of how much and how intensely he wants it, how important it feels even when it's something he's never really let himself imagine he could have.

Brandon's lips curve against his, pleased and happy and comfortable, and he lets Nick deepen the kiss, hands just as impertinent as they had been the very second Nick had let him in the door.

Okay, Nick thinks. Okay. So apparently his 2016 self is not only playing top two minutes and making more money than Nick has ever dreamed of, he's also hitting it on the regular with one of the best looking guys he knows. 

Nick is pretty much confused as hell right now, but he has to admit he's also not complaining in the slightest.

"Mm, bed?" Brandon suggests, half an inch away from Nick's mouth, warm and intimate. He nudges Nick's thighs apart with his knee, steps closer to Nick, gets them both turned around before he starts pushing him towards the bed, without really bothering to stop kissing.

Nick goes easily enough at first—hell yeah he's up for this—and then freezes for a second at the unwelcome thought that just as his future self is clearly a lot better on the ice than he's quite learned to be yet, he—might also be better in other parts of his life. That is not something he's in a hurry to explain to Saader. Especially since he isn't sure exactly what they've done. What they usually do.

Nick knows what he likes, and he knows what he'd prefer, but they've clearly got a lot of history that Nick's just plain ignorant of and the consequences for fucking that up might be more than he's really ready for.

Brandon's a good communicator, though, and Nick thinks he can get some hints if he plays this right.

"What do you want?" Nick murmurs, and lets his hands push underneath the hem of Saader's shirt, finding soft warm skin, and more chest hair than he quite remembers from the last time he shared a locker room with him. Not that Nick was looking.

Much.

"Mmm, we don't have a lot of time, do we?" Brandon says, with a soft sigh, one that's a little grumbly, like he's been anticipating a treat that they're probably not going to finish. Nick gets, if at all possible, even more turned on thinking about that. "I just wanna watch you, it's been ages. You haven't sent me a dick pic in awhile, I'm gonna forget what it looks like."

"Right, like you can forget this," Nick says automatically, letting his hips push forward, grinding his dick against Brandon's hip.

Nick's read his own text messages; he was hoping there'd be some kind of clue in there, and even when there _wasn't_ , it had given him a good idea of who he was talking to regularly, who his closest friends were in New York, and at least a tiny head-start on trying to hide whatever the fuck is going on with him. The relative sparsity of them to and from Saader, despite how recent some of them had been, had been kind of confusing right up until Saader messaged him clearly expecting plans to meet up, and now all of that makes a crazy kind of sense to him, because, well.

If he's been regularly sexting Brandon then of course he has to delete his messages frequently. Sometimes other people lean over his shoulder, or steal his phone to show him something, or just to even fuck around with it. And they don't need to see stuff that he's into when it comes to—fucking around.

"Or I was thinking you could suck my dick," Brandon says, starting to unfasten Nick's pants, his hands moving with perfect familiarity as he pops the button, drags the zipper down, cups his hand around Nick's cock and makes a satisfied noise at finding him hard, the fabric of his briefs starting to get damp from just how turned on Nick is already.

This could have gone sideways very quickly if he hadn't been up for it from the moment he'd realized what was on the table here, Nick thinks in the very back of his mind, the part that isn't busy returning the favor by going for Brandon's pants at the same time. As much as it might've solved most of the immediate problem, the idea of claiming he couldn't get it up for whatever reason is a tiny bit mortifying.

"And then what?" Nick asks, pretty sure he's going to get a vote here too but open to suggestions. So very, very open to suggestion.

"Mmm," Brandon says, "see how we're going for time and then I'll do you?"

"Specific," Nick tells him, with enough of an eye-roll to make it look like he's chirping. He's more than happy to let Brandon take the lead and dictate terms, but it's not like he has to admit that out loud.

And fuck does he ever want to get his mouth on Brandon.

He gets held up for a moment fighting with the hook and eye of Brandon's slacks. And—fuck, who wears button-fly pants when they're expecting to be hooking up? Who even has time for that? Apparently Saader does. Nick makes a disgruntled noise and gets them down eventually, yanks at his briefs as well. Maybe a little more carelessly than he usually would—and he tries not to think the word with quotation marks—given the way Brandon makes another one of those low grumbling sounds, but his dick hasn't flagged at all, curving up against his stomach, practically begging Nick to reach out and touch it.

Brandon's still wearing his shirt, half-unbuttoned, but Nick's too impatient to deal with that too. Besides, he figures if Brandon wants it off, he's got two hands himself. He steps out of his jeans and starts to yank his own briefs down but Brandon catches his wrist and says, "Leave them on?"

It's a request, Brandon's tone suggesting that he's asking for this rather than expecting it; Nick hasn't gone too far off the map yet, and this is still okay, this is still gonna happen.

"Okay," Nick says.

It should be fine, he packed more changes of clothing than he thinks he'll need anyway for this roadtrip. He can deal with damp cotton stretching tight over his dick for a few minutes, pressure that almost feels good, even as it makes him want to blush. There's something that seems so much dirtier about the spreading stain and the obvious damp spot on his underwear than it would feel if he was just naked and leaking pre-come onto his own skin. And that's definitely doing it for him, too, makes him feel like he's getting harder, blood struggling to fill his dick where it's constrained by the elastic.

Fuck, he has to stop dwelling on that if there's any chance he's not going to go off the second he gets his mouth on Brandon. He has to act like he's been there before.

And he's probably never going to be able to hear those words in a professional context again without blushing at least a little.

He should make some kind of move now, though, he thinks. Push back at least a little bit. Brandon's never struck him as the kind of guy who wants to run the show, at least not all the time. Brandon's quiet and assured and likes to lead by example. He also likes having very clear instructions. Nick's only playing off his own instincts, but he has a feeling they're going to serve him well then and there. So. Time to put himself in a position to succeed. And that means directing this towards his strengths.

"You gonna just stand there?" Nick runs the tip of his finger along Brandon's length. "Or do you wanna sit down first?" He's kind of hoping for either of those options, he can do that; he's not so sure about his ability to go down without rubbing off on the bed himself if Brandon's stretched out flat.

"The second one," Brandon says after a second, and he backs off, sits down at the end of the hotel bed, bare-assed on the comforter that Nick's going to be sleeping under later, _fuck_ , and spreads his legs, eyes not leaving Nick at all.

This is going to work for Nick. Oh god, is it ever.

Nick steps closer, and holds his breath when Brandon moves; lays back for a second, his arms stretched over his head. The brief hesitation in his step that follows that is probably not even noticeable, definitely not by the time Nick belatedly puts together what Brandon's doing, which isn't at all changing the play up on him.

Brandon plucks one of the pillows from the bed behind him and drops it onto the carpet in front of him.

"I wanna beat you fair and square tomorrow," Brandon says with a shrug, a tiny smile playing over his lips. "Not because you fucked up your knees the day before the game."

"Thanks," Nick says dryly, hoping he's hiding how that consideration kind of makes him want to melt. Of course Brandon's kind of sweet in bed, too.

He drops to his knees, notices that's not quite as easy as it usually is, which either says something about how often he doesn't do this these days or just that even at twenty five he's already getting old. He's not sure he likes either option, really. This is definitely one of those things that was easier at twenty two.

Nick reaches out to touch Brandon properly, steadying his dick with one hand, letting the other brace on Brandon's thigh, giving himself something to balance against. At first it feels a lot like just touching himself, soft delicate skin over firm flesh, coarse dark hair that's thick between his legs when Nick's fingers make it that far down and spread out more over the tanned length of his thighs.

There's not really a tan line, not when Nick's eyes run down toward his knees or up over his chest.

"Naked sunbathing, eh Saader?" Nick says, grinning, and Brandon taps two fingers over his cheek mock-chidingly, hiding what Nick suspects is sincere impatience. Brandon's a good guy, he's not a _saint_.

"Like you don't remember it," Brandon says with a grin. "C'mon, Leds, we don't have all day."

"I like making you wait for it," Nick says, before he can stop to doubt himself. That's apparently nothing exceptional for them, though, because Brandon just laughs quietly, like Nick's just fulfilling expectations.

Nick's not going to make him wait that long, though. Not when he's just as eager to do this as Brandon is to have him.

He gets his hand on Brandon's dick again, lines up and goes right down.

He might not be a hundred percent steady in this body all the time yet; his muscle mass distributed a little differently than he's used to, and he's spent more than a few minutes standing in his most well-lit bathroom just looking in the mirror and trying to figure out what else was different. He has a few scars he doesn't remember, and a quick internet search hasn't let him work them all out yet. He's assuming they're pretty much all from hockey.

He might not be entirely sure of himself or what he's used to anymore, but he still knows how to suck dick, doesn't hesitate before letting Brandon push against the roof of his mouth, sliding deeper into his throat than Nick will try with anyone he's not regularly sleeping with.

Brandon makes soft, pleased sounds—so that's definitely not a surprise for him, however pleasant—and pulls at Nick's hair, murmurs "Yeah, yeah, fuck, so good at this" and thrusts carefully into Nick's mouth, his hips moving just enough.

They've definitely done this a lot, because Nick can pick up Brandon's rhythm just fine, works the base of his dick over with his fingertips while he keeps sucking, and Brandon moans and sweats and makes a high-pitched whine in the back of his throat when Nick lets his dick slip out and mouths over his balls instead. The tiny tremors in Brandon's thighs had been a good hint that he was getting close, and Nick doesn't want this to be over yet, wants to draw it out some more if he can. If this is the first time he's going to remember sucking Brandon off then he wants it to be fucking perfect.

"Fuck, fuck, I'm gonna—" Brandon says urgently, and Nick doesn't let himself second-guess it before closing his eyes and saying, "Okay then."

"Fuck," Brandon says, emphatically and maybe louder than is probably a good idea, and shit, Nick wishes he knew who was on the other side of the hotel room to him. Hopefully someone who isn't one of his teammates.

And then Nick stops worrying about what his teammates may or may not be overhearing because Brandon is coming, all over himself and Nick's face and, as he discovers later, the bedspread underneath them.

Nick's going to leave a substantial tip for housekeeping.

Nick wipes his face clean—he thinks, he hopes—and licks his lips, is well aware he's going to have to shower before he sees anyone other than Brandon. The whole beard thing has some definite drawbacks when it comes to getting filthy like this.

"That was so hot," Brandon says, letting himself flop backward so he's mostly lying on the bed, legs dangling over the edge. "What'd I do to deserve this? You normally don't like getting it everywhere like that."

He's saying everywhere but he's still staring at Nick's face, and Nick colors as he realizes that means firstly that he's probably still obviously covered in Brandon's come, and secondly that he's done something different without thinking. It's probably a giant pain in the ass to get jizz out of your beard, so he can guess why he wouldn't always go for that these days, but the way it'd made Brandon get so hot and then get off so hard… even if he could rewind five minutes he'd do it again.

Nick gets up, and none of his joints actually creak or anything like that, but he definitely is glad that Brandon had made him use the pillow after all. He feels kind of—stiff. And not just in the way where all he can think about is how bad he wants to get off, now he doesn't have the immediate distraction of Brandon, all hot and touchable and seconds away from coming. He kind of wishes there was a way to find out easily how long they've been doing this; Nick's reflexes and the ease Brandon has with him makes him think that this is… not new.

He crawls onto the bed and stretches out beside Brandon, lying on his back and staring up at the paint on the ceiling, the tiny cracks spider-webbing around the light fixture. Brandon's still starfished out and breathing too hard, but when Nick cuts a glance in his direction it's to see his eyes are closed, even as his chest rises and falls a bit more rapidly than normal.

A half-remembered chirp from the locker room—what feels like just last week, but Nick has to accept was really more like four or five years ago now—resurfaces in the back of his mind, and Nick's stomach churns a little. If Brandon falls asleep, Nick won't want to wake him, but he also won't know when he should.

If he's left to his own devices, Nick would just let Brandon stay all night, and there's no point in even pretending otherwise. And that could get them both into a whole world of trouble. Although Nick is deeply glad that the Islanders at least seem to mostly be too old for the type of pranking he'd gotten used to his first year or two in Chicago. Not being on a team with Patrick Sharp or Kris Versteeg helps some in that regard too.

Nick bites his lip and decides to worry about that in a minute. At first, if nothing else, he can get himself off. He's not entirely sure when the last time he got laid even was; his head thinks it was a couple months ago, which is bad enough; if he and Brandon have been doing—this, well. Maybe the off-season, as far as Nick knows? And shit, that's another thing to worry about; he doesn't know if he and Brandon are casual or if it's something else. Are they the type of people now who meet up in the off-season? Do their families expect them to visit?

…Nick can't think about his family right now, that's incredibly inappropriate.

He lets his teeth dig harder into his lower lip and rubs his hand over the outside of his pants, catches the side of his hand on the teeth of the zipper. He's too warm by far, even with the air-conditioning, and even if he wanted to try and do his jeans up again there's no way that's happening any soon. He feels constricted, all over, trapped in his underwear and his uncertainty, desperate to know what all of this means, and maybe even more desperate to get off already.

It's definitely been too long.

It doesn't take long to arch his back up off the mattress and shove his jeans down, peel the fabric over his thighs and further down until he can kick them off, landing in a heap beside the bed. He palms his own dick again then, can feel how hot he is—how hard, how bad he's leaking already—through the fabric, but it's Brandon who makes a sound then. When Nick turns his head, it's to see Brandon's eyes open again, fixed steadily on him.

"Any requests?" Nick asks, voice uneven. He hasn't stopped touching himself, and he's not going to. Not unless Brandon asks him to.

"One day you're going to let me tape this," Brandon says, with the cadence of a long-standing argument, fond rather than disgruntled. "It's so fucking hot, c'mon. Lose the briefs already, Leds."

Nick hopes he doesn't usually argue at this point, because he's not going to and he doesn't want to. He wants them off, wants the relief of being able to touch himself properly and getitng off.

Wriggling out of his underwear is pretty easy, although he's exaggeratedly careful in getting the elastic over his dick, sighs in relief as cool air hits the wet skin, sends a shiver through him.

"Nice," Brandon murmurs, rolling onto his side so he can watch more closely.

Nick just sighs again and curls his hand around the base, strokes up once, before rubbing the heel of his hand over his thigh, a little bit of a tease before he reaches further down, playing with his own balls, tugging them up, letting his hips move with it.

Brandon groans and presses his face into Nick's biceps, drags his teeth over the skin of his shoulder, eyes still open and fixed on Nick's hands. Nick's not usually all that much of an exhibitionist, but Brandon's understated expectations are more encouraging than he might have expected.

"Fuck, babe," Brandon says, and Nick's hand tightens on his dick, his other hand pressing down over his stomach, trying to keep himself from moving too much, not wanting to let this be over too fast.

His breath is coming faster now, and Nick can't pick where to look, whether he should watch Brandon's face or close his eyes. He can't quite keep himself from moving by then, the sheets sticking to his back as he sweats and shifts restlessly in the bed.

"Saader, I, ohh, fuck," Nick says brokenly. He's so close, can feel the climax just within his reach, muscles tightening in preparation. He wants to reach out, or press harder, or touch—something, somewhere, whatever that last tiny push he needs is. It's close enough that it's hard to think, to focus on anything other than how good he feels, how good Brandon feels stretched out beside him.

"Missed you," Brandon says softly, barely audible over the way Nick's pulse is pounding in his ears.

And oh, that was it, apparently, that was something Nick's hardwired for. Even though it feels like this is the first time he's ever done this. It's too much, and he's not sure if he wants to curl into Brandon or pull away. All he does manage to do is inhale sharply, thumbing over the head of his dick one more time, and then he's coming.

It steals the breath out of his lungs for a moment, overwhelming, crushing in the best possible way.

He finally manages to breathe out, hand falling away, sticky and wet, and he stares up at the ceiling some more, blinking hard.

Brandon presses an open-mouthed kiss to his shoulder again and wriggles closer, slinging an arm low over Nick's waist, cuddling up to him. That feels good too, almost as good as getting off, and Nick's still not sure what's going on or how he'd even got into this situation in the first place, but he's certainly not complaining.

"I missed you, too," Nick says carefully, after they've laid there cooling off for a while.

It's true, too; he didn't know he was missing this, not precisely, but he's been missing Saader ever since the morning he woke up in Long Island in ratty sweatpants with the Gophers logo half-worn off the thigh.

Worrying over that again—seriously, how can he have amnesia when as far as he can tell from watching back game video after game video he hasn't taken a hit to the head at all recently?—is making Nick tense again, and Brandon can apparently tell. He nuzzles at the side of Nick's throat, drags his lips over the line of his jaw, back up to nip at his earlobe.

Nick's not particularly into that, and he twitches reflexively; it hadn't hurt and it didn't feel bad, but it was definitely kind of—something like ticklish. Not on his list of turn-ons, that's for sure.

Brandon muffles a snicker into Nick's shoulder, and Nick's eyes narrow.

"You're a dick," he says, pretty sure that's exactly what Saader's expecting him to do and say.

"Mmm, you love me," Brandon says, and Nick's stomach drops because—he's pretty sure he does. He should. He maybe has for a while, but—

He doesn't know whether that's what they are to each other now. If Brandon's expecting him to say it back. He has no idea where the ground is, all hazy and permeable underneath him, treacherous as quicksand.

He's still trying to weigh up how to respond to that when Brandon makes an impatient noise and clambers on top of him, heavy and warm from shins to chest. Brandon's maybe even hairier now than Nick is, which is interesting. It's another change from what he does remember. He just wants to stare and touch a whole lot more than he's let himself so far.

"Leds," Brandon complains, breath hot against Nick's face. "C'mon, we're gonna need to go get food soon. If I don't get to take you home with me…"

He trails off midway through that sentence, leaving a gap that Nick thinks probably contains another long-running disagreement, maybe even an argument. He's not going to leap headfirst into that, though.

"Trust you to make sure you're getting fed," Nick says lightly, sure enough of his footing for that chirp.

"Fuck off," Brandon mumbles, mostly because he can't actually argue that point. He leans in enough to kiss Nick again, though, and Nick wraps his arms around Brandon and just goes with that.

He's always liked kissing, small wonder Brandon's used to them doing that a lot, too.

They do have to rush dinner, when they finally drag themselves out of bed and clean up enough to be seen in public again. From the outside, it must look just like any two ex-teammates making time for a late dinner, chatting easily, catching up. Nick's pretty sure no one sees the way Brandon's hands linger a breath too long on his when they pass plates or condiments across the table. Probably no one would make anything of the way Brandon doesn't even pause to ask before reaching over to spear a few bites of the cabbage slaw that Nick's not going to touch other than to move it away from his chicken.

There's no reasonable reason for him to invite Brandon back up to his room after they eat, but Nick's tempted enough to do it anyway. Wants to lose himself in feeling every inch of his body, giving himself someone else to focus on rather than the silent, near-constant worry about what's happening with him.

He's starting to think again that maybe he should have confessed to the team docs right away. He'd somehow thought that he'd just—wake up one day and be back to normal. But it's been weeks, and he feels just as present in this moment. And just as utterly blank on everything for the three or so years before that.

"I can't stay long," Brandon says, reluctantly, as Nick's closing the door behind him. "I mean, obviously I want—but you've got to get enough sleep, I don't want to give you an excuse for when we kick your ass tomorrow…"

He grins easily, like this is a bit they've done before, multiple times, part of a habit, but Nick almost stumbles, suddenly actually thinking about tomorrow.

He has to play against Brandon tomorrow. Brandon, who he's sleeping with, who he's had a stupid crush on since practically the minute they'd met, Brandon who has this whole history with him that Nick is completely clueless about.

Nick's not sure how this is going to work out. He's played against friends before, that's totally normal. That's fine. He's seen guys he knows well and hangs out with on the other side of the ice before, he's been friends with other guys who've been traded, it's fine. That's normal.

He also gets kind of pissy about it afterward when it doesn't go so well. Nick's pretty good about not being a lousy winner, but he's definitely a sore loser sometimes. So what, he's competitive.

He's not entirely sure how that gels with—a relationship? They have to be dating, Nick doesn't do casual, or at least he never has before. That can't have changed?

Has it?

Brandon's just looking at him, frowning, like he's waiting for Nick's reply and he's confused about what's taking him so long.

"Right," Nick scoffs, a little uncomfortable. Hoping he's making the right choice. "As if you guys are gonna win."

Brandon looks relieved that Nick's done what he's expecting, at least, and he lets it drop there, just crawls onto the bed—the perfectly made up spare one in the room, stretches out on top of the covers and then pats the bedspread beside him.

He reaches over to the nightstand and grabs the remote, too, flips the TV on.

Okay, so they're… not doing anything else, apparently.

That's fine, Nick can watch dumb TV with Brandon, they've certainly done that often enough before.

He keeps fidgeting all through _The Amazing Race_ , and then through the episode of _Hallowe'en Wars_ that follows.

Every time he notices he tells himself to quit it, but he apparently isn't doing the best job of that. Brandon has slowly migrated off the pillow and down to rest his head on Nick's chest instead, and Nick's been trying to lie to himself about how good that makes him feel. Although Brandon can probably tell how fast his heart is beating.

"You're real wound up today, huh?" Brandon says, his voice soft and low, and Nick can't help but notice the way he shifts after speaking, turns his face just a fraction to press a kiss over top of Nick's shirt. He's not sure if that was aimed at his heart or just the closest part of him Brandon could reach, and it's kind of stupid how gooey it makes him feel either way.

"Tough week," Nick says carefully. Has to admit, in the spirit of honesty, "Better since I got here at least."

"Any time, babe," Brandon says, and reaches over to pat Nick's hip soothingly.

His hand is warm even through the thin wool of Nick's suit pants, and now he's regretting not changing into sweats or something after they'd got back from dinner, because he wants Brandon's hands on him again, not to have this barrier between them if they don't need it, he just—he wants.

"You think we've got time to go again before you have to leave?" Nick asks. Hopefully that's not out of the ordinary for them. It's been long enough since Nick was dating anyone that he's not sure how he'd have handled this with anyone else, regardless of if they were a teammate.

…ex-teammate.

Shit, he's really not used to that one yet.

It's not that he's been lonely, precisely; he's had other people to talk to and spend time with, and for the most part he thinks he's been doing an okay job of keeping up with the Islanders and the way they do things, even though it's different to what he's used to from Chicago. But he hasn't seen anyone he knows well since this all started, and the contrast mixed with the sheer relief of just being around Saader is putting him a bit more on edge than he'd like to admit even just to himself.

"I fucking miss you," he adds, and maybe that gives away more than he'd like it to, because Brandon sits up and looks at him, brows drawn together in a frown.

He rubs his thumb along Nick's jaw, looking helpless and conflicted, biting his lip before he replies, "Fuck, I miss you too, I know. It's always worse at the beginning of the season, right? We've done okay so far, we can do this."

Nick tries to smile back at him, but it feels decidedly wobbly, and like it doesn't quite fit on his face. He's filing away the information as he does that though; if it's always tough to start the season that—

That kind of implies this has been going on for a while, then. That answers some of Nick's questions. He's really going to have to work this stuff out, and fast.

"Come here," Saader says quietly, hands gentle as he urges Nick to sit up too.

Nick leans in, appreciating Brandon's warmth, his solidity, the bone-deep reassurance of having Brandon wrap his arms around him and hold him tight.

"So, tough week, huh?" Brandon repeats to him, gentle enough that Nick can tell he cares as well as that he's teasing just a little.

"Yeah," Nick says, and he's not even talking about the way his team keeps losing, the way he's been struggling to keep up on the ice sometimes, feeling like he's letting his team down. Feeling like his body is just slightly out of sync with his mind, not moving the way he thinks he is, not quick enough to remember what he's supposed to be doing now rather than—back in Chicago.

He aches with the sudden and overwhelming urge to confess, to tell Saader exactly what's going on. To explain why everything feels slow and wrong and out of season. The only thing that's felt right, sung clear and true along every nerve in his body in all this time has been being there with Brandon, but he's horribly convinced that the second he does admit to this—Brandon's going to be pissed at him. Maybe hurt. Because Nick's _lied_ to him, by omission if nothing else, and Nick's never lied to Brandon before, not so far as he can remember.

But he can't stand the thought of letting go of this one thing that makes him feel right again, even if it would mean someone else could know. He's going to have to talk to someone, though. The last day or so has made that much clear, at least.

"I really do have to go soon," Brandon says, breath warm against Nick's ear. Brandon's hand is warm against the back of Nick's head, thumb rubbing soothing circles on the nape of his neck, slipping just under the collar of his shirt. "You wanna make out for a bit first, though?"

"God yes," Nick says, and turns his face to meet Brandon's, eyes closed as he lets himself sink into soft, slow kisses and for a little while, the rest of the world is completely irrelevant.

* * *

Maybe it's the fact they get their asses handed to them by the Jackets, but Nick's too busy after the game kicking himself for not playing better to remember that there's a reason he's been avoiding talking to too many people recently.

His phone rings in his pocket while he's in the middle of making himself dinner back home in New York, and Nick catches himself a split second before putting a hot pan down on a plastic bag, so he's focusing more on avoiding that than he is on looking at the caller ID once he's got a hand free to actually answer it.

"Hey Leds, fucking answer your phone more often, jeez," is what greets him, and Nick blinks for a second, almost not recognizing the voice, and he's about to look at his phone screen when his brain belatedly catches up. Kyle. It's Kyle, and—he realizes a moment later—Bjugs with him, probably on speaker phone.

Nick hates being on speaker phone.

"Uh, yeah, I've been… busy," Nick says, which isn't even really a lie, it's just not exactly unusual.

He's always this busy during the season, and so are they, it's not like they're not down in Florida playing just as much hockey as he is. Or possibly they're somewhere else, Nick doesn't exactly keep that close an eye on the Panthers' schedule. It's not like they're, well. His team or Brandon's.

He's pretty sure he must catch up with them whenever they're in town and vice versa, and there's a good enough stack of messages sitting on his phone from the off-season as well that it was clear to him they still train together, still work out together, that they're still friends.

And that's exactly why Nick hasn't picked up the last couple times Bjugs called, or answered Kyle's messages with more than one or two words, because they know him well, and they've been talking to him recently, and if there's anyone he's going to mess up in front of, it's them.

"So, what's up?" Nick asks, crossing his fingers that he hasn't missed anything else they're supposed to be talking about. "You guys getting sick of the beach yet?"

"How the fuck are you not freaking out right now?" Kyle interrupts, and Nick freezes in place.

"Excuse me?" he says after a moment. There's no way he could've given anything away this fast, he's said, like. Seven words.

"Gee, I dunno," Kyle says, crushingly sarcastic as he can get when he's worked up, "I feel like I wouldn't be handling it well if I woke up one day and it was 2020 or whatever," and he probably said something else after that, but Nick is a fucking stereotype apparently, because his whole body goes numb for a second and he drops his phone.

Right onto the kitchen tiles.

Well, it takes a bounce off his foot first, and then clatters to the tiles, and Nick just stares for a moment, Kyle's words replaying in his mind. It takes him a second to shake the shock off enough to crouch down and grab it, and apparently whatever they're making phones out of these days is at least a little tougher than the 2013 equivalent, because miracle of miracles, his phone's still in one piece. Maybe the bruise on his foot is the price he's paying to save it, who knows.

He can half-hear voices still, so he scrambles to get the phone back to his ear, just letting himself sit down there on the tiles, his back against the cabinet, trying not to start hyperventilating again.

"Sorry, sorry, dropped my phone," Nick says, over the top of Bjugs asking—quite reasonably, although at a higher volume than Nick's heard him speak at off the ice possibly ever—"Nick? Are you still there? Kyle, you were gonna ease into it."

"Yeah, well," Kyle says, which is probably a winning argument, not that Nick's clinging desperately to any sort of distraction or anything to keep himself from thinking about what Kyle had actually said, which was that—he knew. He knows. How the fuck does he know?

"How the fuck do you know? And take me off speaker, for fuckssake." Nick demands. "I didn't—"

"Didn't say anything to us?" Kyle finishes. "Yeah, exactly. Bjugs thought one of us was gonna have to go up there to check up on you or something."

Bjugs seems to be arguing that point, possibly from the bottom of a well, and normally Nick would just make fun of them for their old married couple style arguments, but he's still trying to catch his breath, waiting for his heart rate to go back to normal.

"What the fuck," Nick says quietly, seriously fucking freaked out. Maybe he's hallucinating this. Oh jeez, what fucking kind of bullshit amnesia also comes with hallucinations? Because Kyle's not inside his head, Kyle can't know how lost he is.

"Anyway," Bjugs says, having apparently wrestled the phone away from Kyle because he sounds normal now and Kyle's the one whose voice has gone all tinny. "You seriously—at some point in the last couple weeks you woke up here and it's not 2013 like you thought it should be? That ring a bell at all?"

"Yeah," Nick admits at last, and it's a little weight off to say that much. "It's fucking weird, Bjugs, you have no idea."

"I can maybe guess a little," Bjugs says. "I mean, I thought you were fucking with me when you told me the first time, but then you were right about the Cubs—"

Nick barks a mostly humorless laugh. He'd been pretty fucking surprised by that too, the first time he caught a mention of the current World Series champs. "Yeah, well," he says. "Guess stranger things have happened, right?"

His situation right now unequivocably being one of them.

There's some noise on the other end of the line, scuffling and a few muffled words that Nick thinks he's probably better off missing. Damn, maybe speaker phone would have been better.

He's not entirely surprised when the person talking to him again turns out to be Kyle. Bjugs might have height and weight on him, but Kyle fights dirty when he has to.

"Shit, I really did hope you were fucking with me," Kyle says. "Even though you were totally right about—a couple things. Nick. Leds. Fuck, how are you holding up, man? I would've been losing it spectacularly. I can't believe you didn't try to talk to your team docs."

"Oh as if you would either," Nick snaps back, because he might not be sure how close they are these days but he knows Kyle.

"Whatever," Kyle says, which is not really an argument so Nick takes that as the point conceded. "So. Back in 2013—god, this is so weird, you know? Like I wanted to believe you because you were so sure but I still kind of thought you just took a bad hit and scrambled your brain some. Uh. Anyway. A couple years back, you called me—well, you called Bjugs, but I was there too, and you talked to both of us, freaking out, because you woke up in Chicago and as far as you knew, the last place you'd been was New York. Nicky had to talk you down some, but eventually you explained that as far as you knew, it was supposed to be 2016."

"…fuck," Nick says, because in all of his paranoid, freaked out wondering about this whole situation, the one thing he hadn't really thought about was that. He'd figured he'd lost time, he'd forgotten things he should know, not that he—fucking time travelled or something. What the hell. "I mean, I guess. I don't remember that, or pretty much anything since, you know. The lockout."

"You didn't have a lot of details," Kyle says, a little more carefully like he's realized Nick's kind of freaking out again, like he's trying to talk him down. Nick would be more indignant about that if he didn't pretty desperately want someone to calm him down right now. And he'd thought this situation couldn't get any more fucked up. "You just said last you could remember, you'd been out with some of your teammates—on the Islanders, which was when Bjugs wanted to send the paramedics to your place, but you talked him out of it—and you'd said something stupid and never thought anything of it except you woke up and it was the beginning of the streak."

"I—What?" Nick says, loud and incredulous and completely fucking confused. He doesn't understand any of this.

"Yeah, that was pretty much what we said. And once Bjuggy was sure you weren't high on anything or suffering the weirdest fucking post-concussive syndrome ever we kept checking in for a while, and you kept being _right_ about stuff, which was creepy as fuck, except one day Bjugs called and you couldn't figure out why he was calling. And it was like you'd forgotten everything you'd said so we just figured, okay, weird shit happens. But you were never real sure exactly when you'd left 2016, so you just asked us to, you know. Check in. Just in case."

Nick's gaping, mouth hanging open, trying to remember how to breathe.

None of this makes sense.

And at the same time—

It kind of makes perfect sense. He didn't _forget_ half of his professional career, he _switched_. Which means while he's stuck in the future playing at a level he's always dreamed of, with a team he'd never imagined and with a boyfriend he's lying to—

Some other version of him is back in 2013 living the life he's supposed to be having.

Nick's name is on the Stanley Cup and his family are clearly, obviously, incredibly proud of him; he knows exactly what it feels like to kiss Brandon Saad now and he's got a life, a home and a career that are everything he could have ever hoped for—

And on some level, he's still fucking jealous of that other guy, because Nick wants to have all this because he's earned it, not because—

Well, he's not entirely sure what happened. And that means he's not sure how to fix it, either.

Hopefully his older self has his shit together a lot better than Nick does.

 

* * *

2013

Nick wakes up with a start, blinking in a dark room, and he's completely discombobulated at first. This is— something weird is going on. This isn't his room, this isn't even Johnny's guest room or Cal's, both of which are familiar-enough as places to wake up if he'd crashed with someone else or hadn't felt up to getting himself home.

It's not Saader's place in Pittsburgh or in Columbus, either, and Nick's familiar enough with both of those bedrooms to be certain of that.

There's a crash outside the room, a door slamming, and Nick's heart rate jumps, adrenaline spiking while he tries to tell himself to chill. He's wearing pajamas, he was asleep in a bed, nothing all that shady can be going on, jeez.

He gets out of bed in a hurry all the same, though, wanting to know exactly where he is and what's going on. It's dark in the room but he navigates to the door just fine, a thin crack of light visible around the edges, and his hand reaches up to slap the light switch on automatically, his body clearly already well aware of what it takes his conscious mind a few seconds longer to place: he does know where he is.

He's in the spare room—his old room—at Shawzy's in Chicago.

But that's ridiculous, because even Shawzy isn't in Chicago any more. He's in Montreal now, and Nick had been kind of looking forward to getting to see him a little more often, but more importantly he'd moved out of their old apartment months ago. So why the hell is Nick there?

Why the hell is Nick's _bed_ there?

Nick turns slowly to survey the room, his stomach sinking right down to his toes, confused and concerned and more than a little afraid, much as he doesn't want to admit it.

 _All_ of his stuff is there, just like he'd never left.

He scratches the back of his neck while he keeps looking around, as if he's going to see something that'll explain all of this. He licks his lips, swallows, and tries to find steady ground. Rubbing the sleep grit out of his eyes gets him a millimeter closer to feeling actually awake, although he'd also desperately appreciate some tea or coffee sometime soon. He rubs the back of his hand over his mouth as he yawns, and that's another shock, because the beard's gone, too. He's got the same amount of stubble that he vaguely remembers waking up with most days, before embracing his inner hipster—as Boller kept putting it—and maintaining facial hair year round instead of just during the playoffs.

This is—

This is seriously fucking weird, Nick thinks.

* * *

For lack of any better ideas, Nick turns back to his chest of drawers to find some socks—his feet are cold, that's a problem he can actually deal with right then and there—and then he heads into the kitchen.

There's enough noise coming from there to tell that Shawzy's up already, and probably starting to make breakfast, and the evidence of Nick's eyes and nose bears that out as soon as he comes around the corner, automatically taking the same bar stool he must have sat at five hundred times before.

"Morning," Shawzy says, like nothing's going on. "This is almost done, you wanna make tea?"

"Sure," Nick says, and he gets up again, grabs mugs from the cupboard, waits for the kettle to boil and then pours. It feels so normal that it makes him feel kind of numb, insulated from the moment, like he's watching himself move from outside. He steps around Andy easily in the limited space they have, his hands remember exactly which cabinet they keep his favorite tea in, and it's like he just blinks and then he's sitting at the breakfast bar finishing up his meal, just nodding at Shawzy while he talks about his plans for hitting up IKEA on the weekend, when they have a whole two days off in a row, for once.

Nick blinks slowly, and glances through into the living room. That's right, the couch he remembers sprawling out on after practice and before games and during video game marathons is… not there right now. There's just the shitty old one they'd had right after moving in, the one Andy replaced—at IKEA. At some point.

He doesn't remember exactly when Andy bought it, just that it was when they both made the show after the lockout, because that year had been such a fucking marathon death-sprint. They'd had so many games packed into so little time that he'd passed out on the couch more often than not, too tired to make it the whole way to his bed to start with.

But that's insane, how can he be remembering a couch that they don't own? Nick's whole sense of himself shivers for a moment, caught between possibilities.

Either—

Either something is really fucking wrong with him and he's hallucinated a lot of stuff that he has no way of proving, or he's had some kind of insanely vivid dream that just won't shift, or—

Or he's somehow actually back in 2013, or something nearabouts, despite the fact that when he'd gone to bed the night before he'd been very sure it was 2016.

Nick plays a contact sport for a living, and while he's as careful as he can be, he's taken a few hits to the head over the years. He was out for a couple weeks in Rockford, even, although that feels like half a lifetime ago to him now. So it's not like there's no chance he could've got some kind of a head injury, maybe taken a hit down in the A before the lockout was over and everything he's thinking about now could just be some kind of weird dream.

But he's also pretty sure that if he had gotten concussed or whatever, Andy would be asking him how he was feeling. Andy's kind of a flake sometimes, and he's definitely kind of all over the place—when Nick's being diplomatic he just calls it 'boundless enthusiasm'—but he's also more careful with his friends than he is with himself, by a long shot.

But at the same time… Nick can't think of any way he could have accidentally fucking time-traveled, so what does he know? Maybe if he just sits tight it'll work itself out, or he'll wake up, or something.

He's trying very hard not to panic, can feel the edges of that clawing along his nerves, his stomach unsettled despite the tea. This—this could be really bad, and he should call the team docs, he knows he should. Brandon would yell at him in a heartbeat for not immediately getting himself checked out, and god, Nick misses him so much. He has his hand in his pocket for his phone before he's even really thought another step ahead of that, unlocking it and flipping to Brandon's number in his most recent contacts to send him a message, and then he freezes again.

He's going to message Brandon and say—what, exactly?

_Hey, I miss you, and I had some incredibly vivid dream where we've been sleeping together for the last couple of years and I feel like I'm drowning without you?_

Yeah, that'll go down a treat.

Brandon's a nice guy and all—Nick's very sure of that, whatever the hell is going on—but he's not exactly going to just roll with it if Nick drops something that crazy sounding on him. At best, he'll just help Shawzy drag Nick off for an MRI or whatever.

At worst—

Nick doesn't want to imagine it.

* * *

The easiest thing to do is to just go along with what he's supposed to be doing that day, and the easiest way to do that is to just follow Andy, since it's not like they're not going to the same place and all.

Their schedule apparently involves video review at Johnny's, and a short practice after that, one of the ones that's not open to the public. Nick's a little glad about that; trying to play things off like they're normal is going to be hard enough, he's quite happy to have his potential audience limited.

He doesn't say much of anything as they finish getting ready to head out, just asks Andy if he wants to drive when they're grabbing their coats and shoving their shoes on by the door.

"Sure," Andy says instantly, and enthusiastically, and then, suspiciously, "Why? You almost never let me drive."

Nick hides a wince. He'd kind of forgotten that, and so now he's acting weird already, not exactly off to a great start. And he'd also kind of forgotten how Andy drives, and that memory is coming back full force.

"I kind of have a headache," Nick says, mentally crossing his fingers that Andy will buy that explanation. "Wanted to take it easy."

"Ah, sure," Andy says, seeming to accept that excuse. Nick breathes a little easier, and follows him down to the car.

Keeping his eyes open and his mouth shut, Nick manages to get a better idea of what's happening. He works out that they're just over a week past training camp, the lockout behind them and everyone fired up for the shortened season. The memory of the weight of the Cup in his hands feels so real that Nick feels dizzy with it, a little nauseated, and maybe he'd been speaking more truthfully to Andy than he'd quite thought. He doesn't say anything to anyone, of course. And not just because he knows how insane it would sound.

But they definitely haven't lost in regulation yet, so—so far everything Nick thinks he knows matches up. Maybe there's an explanation for this after all, and he'll have a better idea about that once he can see what else happens.

There's an eerie familiarity to being right back in the Hawks room again, Nick can't help but notice. Part of him is desperate to believe this is just the strangest dream hangover of his life, that everything he thinks he remembers is just made up, but at the back of his mind he's certain that it's not. That everything he remembers is true. And so being back surrounded by all these guys he used to know so well is throwing him off balance, looking around the room and seeing all the faces he remembers seeing traded away. He wonders, with a vague sense of guilt, how the Islanders are doing, before reminding himself that right now, that's not his problem.

Mostly, he remembers where to go and what to do well enough, slipping back into old familiar routines, going automatically to his stall halfway down the long side of the room and just listening to what the older guys are talking about and not saying much. At least that's not going to stand out as any different from what he usually did with the Hawks. What he had forgotten was Saader's stall is just down from his, mixed in with the rest of the D for whatever reason, and it was—

It was more than a little difficult to see Saader and not think about everything he thinks he knows about him.

Difficult not to miss him, even though he's almost in arm's reach.

"Hey Leds," Brandon says softly, reaching out to fist-bump him in passing as they all file in and start changing.

Nick aches for a moment, remembering just how long it's been since he got to see Brandon, since they got to do more than just catch up over the phone. The World Cup had—would, fuck, Nick was going to tie himself in knots trying to keep all of that stuff straight in his head—really kind of thrown things off for them, making summer even shorter than usual. Although still too long for both of them, Nick figures, with the memory suddenly all too clear again of what it was like to go through the off-season without any regrets, knowing you'd achieved what you set out to, spending a couple months in a haze of celebrations and beer and photo opportunities. The worst thing about being on different teams was knowing that even if one of them won, the other couldn't. Although Nick wasn't sure it wasn't for the best that so far he's never had to play Brandon in the playoffs. The regular season is more than enough in that regard.

"Hey," Nick replies, and hopes there isn't too much of what he feels showing in his face as he grins helplessly back at Brandon.

He used to be pretty good at hiding that kind of thing. And Nick's more than a little worried that the operative words there are 'used to be'. Trying to maintain that kind of pokerface feels more alien than it maybe should, especially since every time he catches sight of his reflection it's a reminder of how different and how familiar everything is.

Practice is reassuringly easy to follow along with. It's not as if Nick couldn't do half these drills in his sleep, and while he feels like his balance is off a little to start with, he catches up pretty quickly. And he pulls a move on Emery when they go through a shootout at the end of practice that has him cursing in a mixture of admiration and annoyance, and earns Nick a clap on the back from a couple of the forwards, even.

It'd be a bit stupid if he hadn't learned something in the last couple of years, Nick thinks, but he's pleased all the same, can't help but feel himself glow at the praise.

They've got the rest of the day off and a game the day after, so Nick finds himself in the dressing room after practice wraps up without much clue to what to do with himself for the rest of the day. What he should do is go home and put some serious thought into figuring out what's wrong with him—and maybe look at some tape to see if he did hit his head last game and no one noticed, horrible as that prospect is.

What he does is start paying attention when Saader and Smitty are talking about what they're doing for lunch, and it takes a whole one point five seconds for him to say, "Yeah, sure, that sounds good to me," when they invite him along.

This is probably going to take more than an hour or two to figure out, Nick thinks. So taking a break to get lunch with his friends is—fine. Normal. No big deal. They'll pick something up, go back to Saader's, maybe play some video games. All good and fine and normal.

Smitty sticks around long enough to bolt down lunch before explaining, sheepishly, that he has to do laundry or he's going to be completely screwed by the time they take their next roadie, and it's only after he's taken off Nick remembers that Smitty was technically his ride. He and Brandon are deep enough in conversation that he's going to blame that for the distraction, anyhow.

Brandon just shrugs at him when Nick says as much and says, "I can take you back later if you want?" and that settles that.

It's a little dizzying getting to spend time with Saader like this, Nick thinks, as they cheerfully trash-talk each other over NHL13. And it feels so easy, too, snapping right back into how they used to be, back when they were on the same team.

Of course, he thinks belatedly, that's kind of stupid, because as far as Saader knows, nothing's different at all. So it's just Nick who's overly conscious of every word, every gesture, every inadvertent touch. He's pretty sure he remembers what it was like just being Saader's friend, but Nick's honest and self-aware enough to know that he's always been just that little bit more aware of him. Of how he touches Brandon more than anyone else, even Andy, who he's known for longer and actually fucking lives with.

Nick keeps catching himself before he can do something really stupid like rest his head on Brandon's shoulder when he gets tired, or reach out to touch his arm to get his attention. He can't do that. He shouldn't do that for so many reasons, the first of which is that they're on the same fucking team and they need to play together and Nick cannot make it weird. And the second, third and fourth of which are all that it would be incredibly goddamn stupid and the last thing he needs to be trying to deal with on top of whatever the hell is going on with his life. Last but certainly not least, well, it's a terrible idea because if Nick does remember all of this correctly, and everything's going to happen the same way again anyway...

He doesn't want to ruin that, either.

He knows exactly when the first time he got brave enough to kiss Brandon was, and he's never going to forget it. And he doesn't want to ruin that memory or everything they built after it by doing something dumb and short-sighted and needy now.

No matter how much he misses his boyfriend.

* * *

2016

It takes Nick a few days to recover even the slightest sense of normalcy after talking to Kyle and Bjugs; somehow the confirmation that this isn't all in his head and that he really isn't supposed to be there only sharpens the feeling of disorientation.

He might actually have been better off talking to the team docs in the first place, he realizes; sure, they would have thought he was seriously messed up, but at least he wouldn't have to keep acting like nothing was wrong. Having to constantly try and act like he fit in and like he wasn't lying to almost everyone around him was wearing him out more than he would've believed possible.

It probably doesn't help that it feels like he's having to react to being traded all over again; at least when the Wild had sent him to Chicago it hadn't changed much about his everyday life. He'd been disappointed, sure, and wanting to play for your home-town team was everyone's dream growing up, probably, but—he'd just been busy with class and with the Gophers schedule, and it hadn't meant much more than a change in the team he was reporting to for rookie camp.

This hurts a little, now that he's kind of settled in enough to start working out all the ways his life is different. He's realistic enough to know that complaining about any of that is kind of a shitty move; he's got money and respect and a position on the team he's clearly worked hard to earn; all of that is just fulfilling everything he's been working for all his life. That, he's fine with. But he can't help missing the friends it feels like he was spending all of his time with just the other day; Smitty and Shawzy and Mo, the other defensemen in Chicago. It had taken him long enough to feel like he fit in with the Hawks in the first place that he doesn't particularly want to revisit that feeling.

And yet, something about being in New York feels different. Maybe it's just the fact that all the guys on his team think that he's already one of them, that he should be settled in and a veteran in his own right now; that's certainly the vibe he gets from Beauvillier, who's almost more wide-eyed as a rookie than Nick can remember any of the guys with the Hawks being ever. But whatever it is, as bad as those first couple of weeks in New York had felt at times, Nick can feel himself adjusting more and more by the day.

It helps that he's always included, that Johnny will pause naturally mid-chirp in the locker room for Nick to add his two cents in. It also helps that he finds himself starting to spend time outside of games with the other guys, getting lunches together on the road and back home, tagging along for family dinners and getting used to holding babies and building lego with the slightly older kids. He's not going to call himself a glorified babysitter, he tells Cal, sitting on the floor surrounded by a good fifty pounds of lego and a few model ponies which hurt just as much when you accidentally stand on them, but—it's close. It's fun, though.

"It's good to see you again," Ladd tells him while they're lingering in the kitchen and stacking the dishwasher as slowly as humanly possible, ignoring the noise from the living room that even Nick's spent enough time around kids to know is probably going to escalate to shrieking soon.

Nick freezes with two wine glasses in his hands, and then forces himself to hang them carefully up on the side, hoping Ladd didn't catch his hesitation.

"What d'you mean?" he asks, mentally crossing his fingers that he sounds casual enough.

Ladder shrugs, and keeps rinsing off plate. "Just, you went all hermit there for a while, but you didn't say anything so we figured you were, you know. Figuring your shit out." He pauses, and then his tone gets more studiedly casual, careful in a way that sends warning signals through Nick's brain, makes him tense up twice as much all over again. "No problems with the other half, maybe?"

Nick bites his lip, hard, and then forces himself to take a deep breath. He inhales, and inhales some more, feeling like years have passed before it feels like he has enough oxygen to exhale again, and his pulse is pounding in his ears while he tosses up what he can say to that, what it sounds like Ladder might already know.

In reality, maybe it's only a couple of seconds, not even long enough for Ladd to notice that Nick's stuck on how to answer.

"We're doing okay now," he says eventually. "Thanks for, uh, being patient with me, eh? I've been trying to keep it off the ice."

Ladd winces at that a little, and Nick prickles, feels his hackles rise a little at the implied fault there. Apparently he's doing a terrible job of hiding that, though, because Ladd puts the plate he's holding down and holds up a hand, grimacing at himself. "Nah, man, you've been fine. I'm the one who could be doing better there."

"Ah," Nick says, relaxing a little. It's true enough; he knows Ladd's feeling the pressure to contribute more than he has been, and that's been coming from the fans and media just as much as it has to be coming from his own self-assessment. Nick doesn't envy him that, and not for the first time he's glad that as a d-man he gets to avoid some of that pressure. "They'll start going in again for you soon, you know what it's like."

Ladd nods, and then changes the subject back to the terrible taste in music that half their team seems to have, and Nick goes along with it, more than happy to share stories of the gigs they've each gotten to see over summer over the years, and just like that, another evening passes.

He hadn't been entirely truthful with Ladd, though.

Things with Brandon—with his _boyfriend_ , fuck, Nick is really not used to that, although he's starting to think he could get used to it, all too easily—have been… difficult.

Once Nick had realized what was going on there he'd gotten better at replying to Brandon when he messages, has even called him a few times when their schedules lined up. And all of that has been good, has felt natural in a way that not everything else did. Nick's probably been letting himself relax around Brandon more than he has anyone else, and it's so easy to talk to him, so easy to let himself lean into the occasional endearment that slips out when they're talking. He's spent more time than he wants to admit letting himself relive that afternoon in Columbus, remembering how it felt to touch and kiss Brandon, how good it was. And most of the time he can tell himself that Brandon doesn't seem to think anything's wrong either, no hesitation in his voice or his reactions. That should be reassuring; Nick's doing well, he's acting exactly how he's supposed to, but it turns out that in reality all that does is add an undercurrent of crushing guilt to every conversation they have.

Because Nick wants to be fully honest with Brandon, wants him the same way he always has, as much as he's wanted anyone, really—and he'd taken the very first time where he could have said something and lied.

That makes him feel even worse about it all, so it's probably not unexpected that Nick starts finding excuses not to talk to Brandon again. He ducks a couple of phone calls and gives him one word responses to texts, hopes that if he delays long enough he can figure out how to explain all of this.

The point where that plan falls flat on its face is that Nick had kind of forgotten somehow that Christmas break existed. He's not sure how; it's not like he hasn't had the schedule pinned up on his fridge all along, and it's definitely not as if he's missed the decorations everywhere, the holiday music piped into every store and through Barclays when they're out on the ice.

So it's a surprise when Saader gets in touch, sending him through a flight confirmation email with a carefully phrased, "you're still gonna remember to meet me at the airport, right?" attached.

And really, Nick has been a shockingly neglectful boyfriend recently and for all that Brandon's a pretty laid back guy—this is not news to Nick, no matter how old he is—but it's pretty clear that even he's starting to get a little wigged out by Nick cooling things off the way he has been.

"Of course," Nick replies, as if he could say anything else, and as much as he's a little worried about how this is going to work out he can't deny the way his heart leaps in his chest, the sheer pleasure of anticipating seeing Saader. Nick might be screwing things up with him right now, no matter what he chooses to do, but there's part of him that's always, always going to want to see Brandon, no matter what.

At first, Nick seems to be getting away with just playing it off as the season wearing on him, and it's not as if it's news to Brandon that the Isles have been struggling. He's in the same division, after all. They meet at the airport and Nick doesn't even hesitate before hugging him, burying his face in the side of Brandon's neck and just breathing him in. That's easy; that's something that Nick isn't the slightest bit conflicted about.

It gets trickier when they get back to Nick's place, dumping Brandon's luggage in the bedroom before wandering back to the living room and settling down in front of the TV. Nick's not sure if he's disappointed or not that Brandon apparently isn't going to drag him into bed right away. It's not as if Brandon isn't the only person he's slept with in weeks—months, even, and that's Nick counting for himself as well as his older self, probably—and it's not like Nick's stopped wanting him. But however much he might want to give himself a pass for that first time in Columbus… it's not the same situation now. Nick's not good enough at lying to himself to think anything else.

And it turns out that Nick should've spent some of the time he's been worrying about that in figuring out how he was going to deal with having Brandon in his space again. Because now that he's there, real and in touching distance, and apparently happy to see Nick—

It's just as hard to say no to that as Nick's been guessing it would be.

* * *

They curl up together on the couch and watch some of the TV that's been piling up on Nick's On Demand, something quiet and undemanding that makes it easy to just sit together, to just exist in the same space again. Nick gets a little too comfortable after a while, maybe, and slouches against Brandon's shoulder, finally relaxed enough to actually feel sleepy rather than tense with the worry he's going to do or say the wrong thing.

"Hey, you can lie down," Brandon says softly, his hand warm when he curls it around Nick's forearm, nudging at him until Nick stretches out with his feet under the cushion at the far end of the couch, his head on Brandon's thigh.

Nick hadn't quite expected that to feel as intimate as it does, not just because his face is so close to Brandon's groin—although, yeah, that's part of it—but he's entirely at Brandon's mercy, too. Brandon just hums a little as he cards his fingers through Nick's hair, brushing it back behind his ears, scratching lightly over his scalp, and if Nick could purr, he would.

"Feel better?" Brandon asks a little while later, while Nick is basically putty in his hands, all his defenses melted away with the constant, easy repetition of Brandon's fingers in his hair, stroking in a slow easy rhythm.

"Mmmm," Nick replies automatically, and then he remembers all over again just how screwed up everything is.

He must tense up noticeably, because Brandon's hand stills, and he's the one who's sounding brittle and fake casual as he asks, "Nick? Can you please tell me what's wrong?"

Nick sits up, swinging his legs back down off the couch and putting a couple of inches between himself and Brandon on the couch. It feels like miles, and it makes his chest hurt. God, he's fucking this up.

"I—nothing," he tries to say, a feeble lie to snatch after some kind of normalcy, and Brandon's not buying it.

Saader looks more stressed than Nick thinks he's ever seen him, although he's miserably aware that the Brandon he knows, his friend—well, that relationship isn't even a year old, yet. He doesn't know Brandon as well as he's supposed to, as well as he wants to. It's too easy to forget that part, sometimes, surrounded by a future that seems to have Brandon as a foundation stone.

"Are you—is there someone else?" Brandon asks, looking sick about it. "I know it's been rough for you this year, but—you keep not even talking to me, Leds."

"No!" Nick protests instantly. "There isn't—I wouldn't, Saader, you know that."

He's stumbling over his words, horrified and aware he needs to fix this somehow, but at least that's the absolute truth. He's sure of that much. He certainly hasn't slept with anyone since the hotel room in Columbus, and he doesn't think he would've changed enough in the last few years for that to be any different for the other Nick, either. He's never had any trouble committing once he'd made the decision to, that's for sure.

"Then what?" Brandon asks, the slow burn of his temper starting to be evident in his tone, the tightness of his jaw, the way his hands flex uselessly on his thighs.

Nick tries to deflect again, but he can't get the words together, can't think of anything he could say to make this better. He doesn't know how to deal with this, he's barely come to terms with the fact that not only did he apparently decide not to stay closeted his whole career but he's actively dating—seriously, with feelings and shared dressers and belongings at each other's houses—one of his teammates. Ex-teammates. _Fuck._

It's too much, and he can't push that away any further, so Nick straight-up panics and blurts out his uncertainty, admits he has no idea what he's doing, but he's trying, he really is.

Brandon might be mad but he's still, always thinking and he stops dead, waiting for Nick to make eye contact with him at last, and then he demands Nick tell him exactly what's going on.

Nick has to tell him the truth.

It sounds insane, and he says that up front; "I know how this sounds," Nick says. "But I'm—I wasn't here until a few weeks ago. I woke up one morning and it wasn't 2013 any more, and I have been so fucking confused, but I don't know how to fix this." He takes a deep breath, and goes on, relieved that Brandon at least is letting him pour it all out without interruption.

And at first it looks like it's going to be okay.

Brandon's horrified, sympathetic; transparently worried about Nick's head, although admitting what Bjugs and Kyle told him help a little there. Nick's pretty sure if he was anyone else Brandon would've thought he was trying to prank him, but at least his reputation and his relationship with Brandon render that moot. Nick kind of suspects Brandon might call the guys he knows in Florida to check with Bjugs directly later, just to make sure Nick's not hallucinating conversations as well as forgetting the last three years of his life. Not that Nick would blame him.

Then Brandon asks how long this has been going on, trying to narrow down when and where in case that helps explain the why.

Nick doesn't even think to lie any more, that was clearly not working for him and made him feel awful anyway, so he answers, and Brandon just—freezes.

It takes a couple of seconds before he can speak, and Nick feels each one of them weigh on him, heavy and awful, afraid of something he can't even pinpoint yet.

"So when you were in Columbus," Brandon says eventually. "You—we—do you mean to say that was you, the whole time? And you didn't tell me anything?"

Nick feels like his heart's stopped, realizing all over again what a huge mistake that was, even if he didn't think at the time or even immediately afterward, still in shock and greedy and freaked out and not at his best.

"No? I mean, no, I couldn't tell you then, I—freaked out. I'm _sorry_ ," he says, feeling that awful hollow in his chest, the chill spreading from his lungs and into the rest of his body, starting to go numb all over.

He'd worry about whether something was wrong with him, but it's pretty clear this is one hundred percent his own fault, the fallout of his own decisions, and arguably even he can say he probably deserves what's about to happen.

All he can do is watch as Brandon pulls even further away from him, the expressions chasing each other across his face almost too fast for Nick to recognize them; hurt, betrayal, _fury_ , and a horrified guilt that Nick only identifies in hindsight, thinking back on the moment a while later.

Nick tries to defend himself, even though he knows his excuses are pretty weak, and that just makes things worse. Brandon digs his own toes in, and argues right back, pointing out that Nick should have told him, and the fact Nick knows he's right doesn't make it any easier to hear, in the midst of the argument.

It doesn't end with slammed doors and raised voices, and in some ways, that's what makes it even worse.

It ends with Brandon rubbing his hands over his face, hard, like he's trying to scrub away all evidence of feeling, trying to make himself blank and bland, and he just says, "I need—I can't talk to you right now," and quietly puts on his shoes and his coat, picks up his bags and walks out the door, closing it carefully behind him with a quiet sound.

The silence is roaring in Nick's ears and he sits down hard, completely thrown, feeling all of three inches tall, because that had hurt, so much, and he just—has no idea what to do. And even if he can fix this—which apparently he did, hopefully, if the fact he 'went back to normal' after telling Bjugs is any indication, well. He's just kind of fucked up his future self's relationship six ways to Sunday. And even if he managed to swap back right then and there, well. Nick's not sure he would believe someone telling him that it was all fixed and he didn't have to be mad anymore.

So now he's apparently trapped in his own future, not sure how to get back, not sure if he even can get back, and one of his closest friends—his boyfriend, who he fucking loves, and kind of has for years, even if he hadn't been admitting that to himself—isn't speaking to him.

Might not be his boyfriend anymore.

Nick decides the hell with being an adult and goes the fuck to bed. So what if it's 2pm on Christmas Eve, he can sulk for an afternoon before trying to figure out a way out of this problem.

The nap helps a little, and he decides to start seriously trying to figure out what was going on in his life—how he got himself into this situation, where his head was at, whatever the hell he might have done, in the future, to set this off—and drags out his laptop. At least he still uses the same sorts of passwords, apparently, so that's easy enough.

There's not a whole lot in his emails, and to be fair he looked at some of those on his phone anyway; if there was anything more useful there then he would've seen it already anyway, so feeling like one of those guys on TV who investigates shit on CSI or whatever, he pulls up his browser history, and—

Well, the porn isn't exactly a surprise, Nick's in a relationship, not dead. And his taste hasn't exactly changed much over the years, not that _that's_ a surprise either. And there's all the usual sort of stuff, bank statements and things from his agent and random news articles and weird shit that he's pretty sure came in a link from Connor, and then—

Then he finds the links to a whole bunch of jewelry websites and that's confusing for about three minutes before he realizes they're all rings.

Nick was ring shopping.

Nick was—he looks at the most recent time stamps, and they're, as close as he can figure, pretty much the day before he woke up in this situation.

Nick's pretty sure, with the type of gut-level certainty that makes him intimately acquainted with pure nausea all over again, that he was about to propose.

Well, _fuck_.

* * *

2013

Nick's not sure what changes, one day, but he's lying in bed on an off day, half enjoying the fact he doesn't have to get up and be anywhere any time soon, and half once again poking the bruise and trying to figure out what the fuck happened, how he got himself into this situation, and this time, he actually remembers something that might explain it.

He's pretty sure he's been doing a decent job of pretending that nothing's all that different with him, trying to act like he doesn't know so many things that are going to happen before they even do. It's a little harder to get too stressed out during games when he knows that they're going to get at least a point out of it no matter what, and it's difficult to get too low even when they have a bad game, comparatively, because he knows where this season is going to end up. 

He wants it, too; can feel the weight of a ridiculously huge ring on his finger as if it was just yesterday, can remember the sheer elation of holding the Cup above his head, seeing his teammates wild with joy, the flashes of red and white in the stands behind them. It had been so good, and it's hard not to be a little seduced by that again, to feel the draw of a guaranteed good time, a great thing.

Nick's daydreaming about that—and, if he's being honest with himself, about finding Saader after they got back to Chicago, of stumbling into a dark room with him, drunk and laughing and so happy, and remembering how good it felt, leaning in to kiss him for the first time. Remembering Brandon's mouth opening to him, messy and hot and so awkward, the two of them fumbling with clothing, desperate enough to try and get each other off right then and there. 

There'd been a noise on the other side of the closed door that Brandon had backed Nick up against which had scared them out of that, at least, but they'd taken about ten seconds after that to decide to bail on the rest of the Cup shenanigans for the day and just gone straight back to Nick's place, barely able to keep their hands off each other.

If Nick remembers correctly—and despite the amount they'd both been drinking, he's pretty sure he does—they only really waited long enough to shave before falling into bed, and everything else had just sort of followed on from there.

It had felt easy, in the way so few things in Nick's life have ever felt truly easy; moving smoothly from friendship to something even more intimate, building their relationship piece by piece into the steady underpinning of both of their lives that it was. Nick getting traded hadn't really shaken that, however much it still sucked, on a practical day-to-day level. And neither had Brandon getting traded, although Nick had been selfishly a little gladder about that than Brandon had.

It's probably not the best thing to be thinking of, then; because now Nick's caught in between being kind of turned on, and feeling acutely lonely, missing Brandon more than he can put into words. It's dangerous to let himself dwell on that, because he's trying so, so hard not to make things weird with Brandon here, but god, sometimes he just wants.

That's the feeling which somehow unlocks the memory, though; Nick's hand stealing underneath the covers and pushing under the waistband of his pajamas, thinking that at least if he's probably not getting laid again any time soon he can take his time jerking off, and he wishes, intensely, that Brandon was there with him again, that he could go back to that first, fumbling—and somehow incredible despite their unfamiliarity—time with Brandon. 

He's thinking about how good winning was, how Brandon felt, naked and sweaty and so enthusiastic, meeting every expectation Nick could've had and then blowing them out of the water, and then he remembers the antique store, New York in the fall, edging into winter.

Remembers feeling the crushing pressure of losing more than they're winning, of missing Brandon acutely, of missing feeling like he was on the right path and doing the right things, where he was supposed to be.

Remembers the weird flash of warmth against his fingers when he'd run his hand over the toys scattered on top of an old chest of drawers in the store, waiting for Boych to finish trying to bargain the owner down on some book he'd been interested in.

Remembers thinking that he wished he could win the Cup again.

The bottom drops out of Nick's stomach and he sits bolt upright in bed, all thoughts of arousal forgotten.

He'd—

Fuck, he _had_ done this to himself, somehow.

He'd wanted the Cup again, so bad he could taste it, and whatever fucking force of nature or magic had heard that wish had twisted it, or maybe even read the truth under it that he hadn't even been ready to admit to himself; had thought that sending him back to live these few months again would give him what he hadn't even known he'd been asking for. Had taken that constant undercurrent of missing Brandon and given him back the Brandon he could see every day—

And wasn't sure he could touch.

Nick's not sure if this counts as a dream or a nightmare, really.

And now that he's figured it out—he thinks, anyway-he's still not sure how to fix it.

Because as much as some things about the past have been fun to experience again, to let himself actually live in the moment and enjoy…

Nick wants his life back. _His_ life, the one he hadn't realized he actually appreciated as much as he does. And god, he misses Brandon so much it makes him want to puke.

That's the last push he needs to decide that he does have to talk to someone else about this before his head explodes from keeping it all in, and as much as he'd like to tell in Chicago—he really doesn't want to get pulled out of the line up, or shipped off to a hospital, or wherever they send people these days when they start trying to talk about the sort of things Nick's been bottling up for the last couple of weeks.

He's going to have so much more sympathy for all the people peddling weird-ass conspiracies on TV in future, that's for sure.

Nick digs his phone out of the pile of junk on his nightstand and just scrolls through the numbers saved in there for a few minutes. Most of the guys are ruled out right away, by virtue of the fact either they'd be convinced it's some kind of Shawzy or Sharpy-related prank, or because they're too likely to just worry about him—that takes Tazer and Smitty both right out of the running, too. In the end, it's not that hard a decision.

He thinks about Mikey and then remembers this was the summer they'd—well, Mikey's another person Nick should probably talk to at some point, but not now. He's not going to want to hear from Nick right now, not after they'd hooked up that one time, and then never mentioned it again. Besides, he's got college to worry about. So that's Mikey out, and by extension Connor as well, and Jason isn't exactly Nick's first choice for a serious conversation under these kinds of circumstances.

He's going to call the one person he's pretty sure will believe him, or at least won't fucking tell anyone else.

So really, it's kind of inevitable when he pulls up Kyle's number and, with a certain sense of fatalism, taps the button to connect the call. Nick listens to it ring and realizes, distantly, that he's kind of hyperventilating just a little, his breathing heavier than it would normally be, and oh, hey. Yeah, he's kind of panicking more than a little about this.

That was probably inevitable, too.

Of course, the complicating factor there is that Kyle's not alone when he does pick up, sounding more than a little suspicious, and just a little cranky. 

Apparently, Bjugs is there too, which Nick should maybe have seen coming, but whatever, it's not like he doesn't know about them—or, wait, does he know about them now? He's not sure when he actually knew that versus when he kind of suspected but didn't want to say anything because that was what you did, you kept your mouth shut.

Nick doesn't think he's changed a whole lot over the last couple of years but again and again he's running into evidence that actually, he has. That he thinks differently about things, that other things are more important to him that he might not have put so much time and energy into before. And that shouldn't feel as shocking as it does—everyone grows up, that's the whole point, right?—but… he kind of hadn't realized.

He blurts all of that out to Kyle about a second after remembering to ask if he had a minute to talk, and there's silence echoing down the line for a long moment after Nick finally manages to close his mouth again, teeth clicking as he clenches his jaw and tries not to count the seconds while Kyle-probably-is trying to decide whether or not to sic the team docs onto Nick and his whatever-the-fuck is wrong with him.

"I guess… I believe you," Kyle says eventually, and Nick can exhale at last. "I mean, it sounds fucking nuts, but." He leaves the rest of that sentence unsaid, but Nick can probably guess. Kyle's one person Nick's never lied to, even if maybe he should have.

They don't talk much longer that day; the Gophers have practice even if Nick doesn't, but it does mark the beginning of a few more conversations after that, like now that Nick's spilled his guts about it to someone it's easier for him to talk about.

He can't stop going over it in his head though, picking over and over it in the hopes that something else will occur to him, something else he can actually do instead of sitting there and waiting for his future to come back to him. It feels like all he's doing is thinking in circles, though, going over and over the same points.

All Nick can think about is how he'd said he wanted to win the Cup again, and god, he should've been careful what he wished for, because they're still playing and they're still winning. Nick's trying to stop himself looking ahead to Denver, staring at the upcoming schedule and thinking about what he could do differently when he knows it's coming, worrying about whether there's any point in even trying because surely he can't change the outcome, he wouldn't be here if the future had changed—and if he can change the future, well. He's read enough and seen enough movies to be nervous that what he changes could have all kinds of effects he can't foresee. He didn't sign up for this level of responsibility, okay?

And, okay, yes, the Cup would be nice. Winning it was amazing, Nick doesn't think he came down from the high until, like. A couple days after the parade, maybe. But the longer he's stuck playing third-pairing minutes with a coach who doesn't entirely trust him, and surrounded by teammates he cares about and misses still, and missing the teammates who hardly even know who he is now, and going home to his empty bed—

Nick misses what he had even more. He misses Long Island, he misses phone calls with Brandon, he misses his dog, he even, god help him, misses New York traffic. And he misses having the faith that he and Brandon were solid, they were long term, they were going to work out no matter what, and now he's second guessing every move he makes in case it's the one that destroys the possibility of their future and—

It's fucking exhausting.

"Are you getting enough sleep?" Brandon asks him a few days later, worried.

They’re just by the boards waiting for everyone else to get out on the ice before practice, jostling each other a little, standing too close together like normal. Shawzy’s playfighting with Krugs behind the net, miming like he’s gonna drop his gloves while they’re both laughing, and no one’s looking at them so Nick just forgets to try and back away again after Brandon tugs him into a quick hug.

Brandon’s frowning at him from a couple inches away, seeming to forget that he's still got his arm wrapped around Nick's head to hold him close. It’s way too intimate for just friends, and Nick can hardly breathe. God, he misses this. Misses having Brandon so close. And he can't believe he went as long as he did—he's pretty sure he didn't exactly get in touch with his emotions and figure it all out for himself until the conference finals, if then—before realizing that everything he felt for Brandon went well above and beyond friendship. They had to be so _obvious_ and yet no one even looked at them twice.

And that’s when Nick realizes that he's never actually asked Brandon how long _he'd_ known.

That was—kind of stupid and self-involved of him, maybe. He's never asked. He'd been overjoyed when Brandon kissed him back and kind of drunk with glee when they'd gone straight from tipsy making out in the back room of a Wrigleyville bar to messy, enthusiastic blowjobs in Brandon's old apartment and then they'd just—graduated to bedrooms, and kind of awkwardly discussed that this was going to keep happening and they both wanted it to so they should probably call it a relationship and they'd gone from there.

How the fuck had Nick never asked?

"I—" Nick starts to say, realizing he's been silent too long, and then he just makes himself laugh, awkwardly, and says, "I guess not?"

"That's no good," Brandon says, his voice light, but there's a sincerity in his eyes that belies that a little. "Gotta keep this thing going, right?"

"Yeah, you're right," Nick agrees, and then, finally, Brandon lets go of him, and Nick lets himself glide a couple inches backward, putting some space between them at last. 

He can still feel the vague sensory echo of everywhere that Brandon had touched him, even through their clothing and protective gear and gloves. He can't afford to get distracted now, he can't get too tangled up inside his own head when he needs to be skating, and he can't let all the things he's worried about mess him up. All he can do is try to remember everything he did last time and try to do it all over again exactly, trying to make sure he doesn't somehow ruin everything.

It's easier said than done.

* * *

2016

Nick feels like he's ruined everything. He wants to bury himself in his room and pull the covers over his head and sulk like he's eight years old again, when the worst thing that could happen was maybe he got sat out of practice, or he wasn't allowed to stay up for the third period even if it was a Friday and there was no school the next day.

He wants to, but he can't, and he knows it. He's got too many responsibilities, too many people depending on him; too many people who need the person he isn't yet and isn't even sure how to be. Nick always figured by twenty five he'd have his life together, he'd be settled and know what he was doing and feel surer of himself, and maybe part of that might be true—at least he's made it as far as the NHL like he always planned, although he'd gotten there by twenty two, too—but he kind of feels like even the Nick he apparently grows up to be didn't feel like he had this stuff on lockdown yet either.

But he knows he needs to keep moving forward now, as much as he can. From what Bjugs and Kyle said when he spoke to them, either he fixes all of this somehow or it just goes away, so—maybe he'll wind up back where he's supposed to be? It seems really unfair that he might never get to kiss Brandon for the first time, properly, or win the Cup for the first time—hopefully not the last, god, he has to touch wood just thinking that, too. It's not like doing nothing where he is now is going to help him or the person he was going to become, so… that's out. He's going to work on everything he can now; being a better person, a better boyfriend, a better hockey player. He might not have had a couple extra years of experience but his body has, and he's a quick learner. He just needs to stay focused.

And the first step there is getting back on speaking terms with Brandon.

He would, obviously, also like to get back onto kissing and doing other stuff terms, but he's not dumb enough to think that's a given, even if he can achieve the first part. He can't even blame his future self for this; this is one hundred percent his own fuck-up, no matter how desperate he'd been.

They're not seeing the Jackets again until later in January, so it's not like Nick can force the issue before then, and, well, when he puts it that way to himself that's probably a bad way to think about it too. But he can at least try to start talking again now.

He stares at the blank message screen on his phone for far too long, trying not to let himself scroll up to see the friendly back-and-forth they'd had before all of this, before Brandon knew he wasn't _his_ Nick, back when Nick was riding high on the unbelievable good fortune that was getting to enjoy all the best parts of dating someone he cared about so much, without having had to actually live through the nerves and panic of starting the relationship in the first place. Of finding out whether Brandon liked him back, liked him the same, whether Brandon _wanted_ him.

If he did ever get back, he was going to have one hell of an advantage, just knowing Brandon would be open to what he wanted, and—

Nick stops, bites his lip, and then makes himself finish the thought. He's going to have to tell Brandon when he's back, he has to admit to at least some of this. Probably not everything, because it couldn't be good for too many people to know what the future almost certainly held, Nick's read enough books and watched enough movies where that goes horribly wrong to want to have no desire whatsoever to fuck with the timeline if he can avoid it. But he's going to have to say something.

Then again, there's no point in crossing that bridge until he comes to it, and right now that bridge isn't even a glimmer on the horizon, so to speak, so. The problem at hand is the one to focus on.

Nick starts typing, thinks about it some more, deletes what he has so far, and then spends a good fifteen minutes just repeating that until he has something he's pretty sure Brandon wouldn't just delete on sight. Providing he didn't set everything to delete messages from Nick unread, but—Nick maybe doesn't know this Brandon as well as he could, but that doesn't seem like it would be his style. For better or worse, Brandon tends to give everyone second and third chances.

Nick just wants to make sure he doesn't regret that.

_Hi Saader. I'm really sorry. I wanted to start with that, because I am, and you should know that. I'd like to talk some more, if you feel like giving me a chance._

Nick pauses, reads over what he has again and hopes it isn't too much. At least now he doesn't need to worry about sounding like the other Nick, that's one small mercy. He hovers his thumb over the emoji menu, tries to stop second-guessing that too, and in the end just compromises by signing it with his name, even though it isn't as if Brandon doesn't know it's him.

There's a heart-stopping moment immediately after the message says it had sent where Nick wishes briefly and overpoweringly that he could call it back, suddenly convinced he's made exactly the wrong move. He drops his phone on the couch by his knee and just tries to breathe, tries to talk himself back down again, and he's almost gotten his breathing back to normal when the phone buzzes right beside his leg.

The screen is facedown, and Nick tells himself it could just as likely be a text from one of the guys, seeing if he wants to get dinner, or from Tyler giving him the latest from back home in Minny, or any one of a hundred different options, but when Nick finally sucks it up and picks the phone back up, it is Brandon replying to him after all.

According to the time stamps, it hasn't even been five minutes since Nick had sent his message. That's either a good sign or the exact opposite.

 _Okay_ , Brandon has said. _Let's talk, then._

Nick suddenly feels like the world is in full technicolor again. Thank fuck for that.

* * *

2013

Nick's been trying not to dwell too much on his situation, but now that he's started letting himself think about it, it really is about all he can think of. It takes him longer than he quite wants to admit to realize that if he can get back to his original time, then—unless things reset, and who knows if they would, Nick has no idea how magic works and whatever crazy-ass quantum physics might be behind this have to be just as confusing—well, whoever wakes up in Nick's body then is going to have one hell of a blank space to fill in. It would be exactly like he first worried; would have to feel like some kind of terrifying head injury. Nick doesn't want to do that to himself.

He does get distracted wondering what it means that all his memories of this time are so clear, still, although they're starting to get tangled up as he relives things, the subtle differences standing out like alarm klaxons, thrilling and scaring him by turns. Is he going to end up just in a loop of this his entire life? Although it's not like he's going to be dumb enough to make a wish like that ever again, so that's something to break the cycle on at least.

That's when he decides to start writing things down. It's a risk, especially if someone else finds it and thinks he's really lost it, that the knock to the head he took back in 2012—less than six months ago for this body, and isn't that a fucking trip to think about—has affected him more than they all thought. But putting it down on paper helps him get his head around it more, even the parts that just spiral off into paradoxes he can't think his way out of and has to assume would just not happen or would resolve themselves somehow.

At least in Groundhog Day this all ended eventually. Nick doesn't think he can relive the last few weeks over and over again without going mad, that's for sure.

And if something does happen—if he gets back and his younger self pops back into existence, well. Nick can at least help him join some dots, too. Although he's not sure how well he'd take waking up with no memories and a lot of mysterious notes in his handwriting stuffed into a drawer on his nightstand.

They get further through the season, still on the streak, still on track for everything Nick remembers and he's still _there_ , no matter how little he wants to be now, and he starts getting a little braver, a little reckless.

He starts leaning on Brandon for longer and longer, even when he maybe shouldn't, even around other people. He's stuck here and he's going to make the best of it, but he can't deny himself entirely, can't deny how much he misses Brandon, how he wants even more now to be able to talk to him, openly and easily. To ask him all the questions he somehow never did, yet, and to make sure they are on the same page after all this.

Can't deny there's still a really fucking important question he's surer every day he needs to ask Brandon, but thinking about _that_ too long makes his chest ache.

2017

Nick doesn't ask, exactly, how Brandon had gotten home after walking out that day. He asks if he's okay, and gets back a "yeah. Don't worry." that's only partially successful in stopping him from worrying, but Brandon's an adult—a much better one than Nick, that's for sure—and he can take care of himself.

They don't talk a lot, to start with, and it's more stilted than it had been. That's probably not surprising, Nick figures; Brandon's the one who's having to reevaluate every word and gesture now, it's not like Nick can blame him.

It's easy to talk about hockey at least, and they slowly start finding their way back towards the friendship that they'd started with as they do. Trash-talking the rest of their division is an easy way to bond, although they avoid talking about their own teams too much. Nick figures they must have worked out how to do that right after he'd gotten traded; worked out how to talk about their day and their problems without sharing too much about what the team was up to on ice. Off ice is another story, and Brandon has Nick in stitches, explaining what Dubinsky had gotten up to on their last road trip.

And mixed in amongst the shop talk and the pieces of small talk that work back into their conversations, they start talking to each other for real again.

"I miss you," Brandon admits one day, in the middle of Nick's anecdote about how he's managed to forget to pick up his dry cleaning for almost two solid weeks.

Nick stops dead, his mouth gone dry.

"I'm sorry," he says again, feeling kind of useless. If he could switch back, if he could give Brandon his Nick back—he would. He'd do it in a heartbeat.

"No," Brandon say quickly, "I mean, yeah, I miss—the you I'm used to. But you're still, you know." His voice trails off and he laughs, rueful. "You're still you, Nick."

"Well, I'd hope so," Nick replies automatically, but he feels the need to match Brandon's sincerity, to give him back a measure of that same trust and honesty. "I really am sorry. Not about not being him, I guess we've covered that I can't exactly help that, but. Uh, for not telling you sooner. I should have trusted you. I _do_ trust you."

"Thanks," Brandon says softly. "I just—it wasn't all your fault, Leds."

"Pretty sure I was the one that jumped you without saying anything," Nick says, compelled to be fair about it.

He holds his breath for a moment; this is the closest they've come to discussing _that_ part of their fight, the most Brandon's said about that day in the hotel. Most of what they've talked about since, when they do talk, has been how Nick's coping, what else he might need to know to keep his body in shape, to look like he fits in on the ice and off. Nick can't deny that Brandon's helped him a lot there, too; he's avoided a couple of missteps he would have fallen into otherwise.

"It wasn't that," Brandon says slowly.

Nick has to breathe out again then, tries to hide the way his pulse has kicked up again by deliberately keeping his breathing shallow and slow, teeth digging into his bottom lip as he listens to Brandon talk.

"It was—" Brandon pauses, searching for the right words. "You'd changed, and I didn't _notice_ ," he says finally. "And that was—that scared the shit out of me, Nick. I should've known."

Nick feels that hot rush of shame again, deepened by the fact that no matter how much he knows—believes, deep down—that it was a terrible decision, he still can't wholly regret it.

"I don't know how you could have," he replies at last. "I was, uh, pretty invested in making sure you didn't notice."

"Mmmm," Brandon says. "I guess."

They change the subject after that, but the air seems lighter now that they've both gotten that much off their chests, with fewer secrets between them. Nick can't help but like that. And he can't help but keep noticing just how easy it is to fall in love with Brandon, pretty much every time and every when. It's going to hurt, if he leaves, even though he knows he's got more waiting for him back in the past, too.

But they sort some of their shit out, slowly but surely, and only wind up arguing every now and then. It feels constructive, somehow; every time they get mad and work it out again Nick feels like he's closer to understanding how Brandon ticks, to being more in tune with him, now that he's older and more reserved, more settled in himself than he had been as the nineteen year old kid Nick started getting to know.

On the ice, Nick starts scoring again and god, he'd missed that, too. It feels like things are getting better all over, the Isles creeping up the standings, and Nick spending more time just talking to Brandon without dwelling on the one big problem that underlies every conversation they have.

He doesn't realize quite how comfortable they've gotten with each other again until he's facetiming Brandon to bitch about how bad the subway's been all week and how he misses driving to practice, and Brandon snorts and says, "You and cars," like that's supposed to mean something.

"Huh?" Nick asks, genuinely lost.

"You know," Brandon says, and then he stops. "Shit, I forgot, you don't know. Uh, we. Have some history there."

Nick frowns for a moment, and then it dawns on him, a blinding insight in perfect three dimensional detail. "Oh. _Oh_. Seriously?"

He doesn't say that he'd have expected Brandon to be too cautious to fool around in a car; Nick's kind of surprised that _he_ would've been up for that himself, actually. He's usually a find-a-bedroom type of guy, and he's gone home with people rather than hook up anywhere all that public. They must have been really motivated.

Nick lets himself have a split-second's recollection of the one time he's had Brandon in his bed, and mentally corrects himself. Yeah, he would've been motivated all right. 

"I guess it's dumb worrying about what you know already happened," Brandon says, with an awkward laugh. "But, uh. Yeah. Our first time was kind of in the back of your car."

"No way," Nick says instantly.

Brandon laughs again, and it sounds a lot more natural this time. "No, really. It was that summer, after the Cup, and, well. It seemed like a good idea at the time. You swore you couldn't wait long enough to get upstairs."

Nick lets that information settle for a few seconds, digesting it. It's a weird feeling; he's equal parts kind of turned on—sex! With Brandon!—and jealous, as fucked up as that sounds. That's a memory he doesn't have, will probably never get to share, and it's clearly still important to Brandon even if he's making jokes about it.

“It was actually pretty bad,” Brandon admits. “I mean, in that so terrible it goes right back around to being amazing kind of way, and winning helped even if that much beer definitely didn’t, but, well, we got better at sex after that. Maybe not the talking so much, but, well.”

Brandon makes a face then, like he’s just realized what he’s saying, and Nick knows him well enough to catch traces of sadness in his expression, distant and yearning. It cuts the heart out of Nick because he knows he can't fix it, this isn't his Brandon, not really, and they don't have all the same history, the same memories. All he can do was not make the same mistakes when and if he gets back. He'll probably make different ones, sure, but there’s no avoiding that.

It makes him feel kind of hollow again, too; he wants to ask more, wants to talk about that and everything else that had formed the foundation of the fully-formed relationship that Nick had fallen into and nearly ruined. The more they talk though, the more Nick gets the impression that as much as he's been messing up occasionally, his older self hasn't been perfect either. They clearly needed to talk more, and they still do, and even if Brandon's forgiving him for, well, doing that same kind of thing again, leaping before he looks and selfishly grabbing what he wants, he can't do that for the Nick he apparently becomes.

Only part of this is Nick's problem to fix, and god, he really wants to be back in his own time again. If he even can do that.

The thing he hasn't confessed to Brandon or anyone is the growing fear of what he's going to do if he never switches back. What if he just started lying about it to Bjugs back in 2013? What if they're both stuck, and they just have to make the best of it from then onwards? Nick has some very definite ideas about what he's going to do differently if that's the case.

Every now and then, he tries to logic out what it means for him to be there now, wondering why whatever his future self is doing back then hasn't changed things in the future, and then worrying what it might mean if he had. Nick tries to work out all the paradoxes involved and just succeeds in giving himself a headache.

He never asked for this, and he has no idea how to fix it, but if the only thing he can do is keep doing his best to build his own future, well.

He'll do that.

And the longer he's there, the more and more he's certain of one thing: no matter which time it is, he needs Brandon to be a part of that future.

 

2013

Brandon winds up at his and Shawzy's place more often than Nick thinks he might've done originally, although it's not like he'd let himself track that the first time, so he could be wrong.

They have their enormous couch now—all of them might still be on their entry level contracts, but he and Shawzy weren't cutting corners there and so they'd splurged when Shawzy had dragged him out to IKEA a couple weeks ago—and yet, every time they watch a movie or play video games, Brandon winds up tucked right into Nick's side.

It's equal parts reassuring and incredibly frustrating, really.

Nick's as tired as he can remember being—he's playing up on the top pair with Duncs at least half the time now, which is as much of an adrenaline rush as he remembered—but they have so many games jammed into such a short amount of time, and he's worried he's going to forget himself and lean in to kiss Brandon automatically, so used to having him right there. It makes him a little punchy sometimes, enough that Shawzy and Smitty and Saader all independently ask him if he's okay more than once, and then Nick just straight up feels guilty.

He tells them he's fine, and he dreams about curling up with his Brandon, and he keeps going out there and playing hockey and leaving notes for himself every time he thinks of something important, even if sometimes those notes are just the funny thing that Bicks said at practice, or the way Brandon's hand tightened on his knee when he fell asleep on Nick's shoulder and Nick tried to move away and let him sleep. Nick's going to be tucking that memory in close to his heart as long as he needs it, even if he can just tell himself it was reflex and not necessarily personal.

Nick can feel that they're getting closer and closer, more intimate and affectionate by the day, and it seems somewhat inevitable when Brandon pauses mid-sentence one day and asks, with a sort of distant clarity in his tone, and a little more fear in his eyes than Nick thinks he's seen in years.

"Nick, are you—are we okay?"

Nick knows, suddenly, with a certainty that goes right down to the marrow, that winds itself into his DNA and becomes an inextricable part of him, that this it. This is their moment, fast-forwarded several months because he was too impatient to trust in himself and his team, because he kept second-guessing himself and wondering about the paths not taken for so long that he had to retrace his own steps, and now—

Now he has to tell Brandon. Now he's _going_ to.

"Yeah, I think so," Nick says, and he reaches out to take Brandon's hand, lacing their fingers together, squeezing tight.

Brandon lets him, Brandon links their hands up as easily as if it's Nick's pass from the blue line that he's collecting to tip on goal. Nick might be holding his breath.

"I need to tell you something," Nick adds, and then his stomach swoops and his head spins, and for a few seconds he's seeing double, feelings compressed and concentrated and squashed down by an ineffable weight, what feels like something just out of reach superimposed over everything he can see and hear and feel. It's like he's there and not there all at the same time, like everything is duplicated, and with a start Nick realizes that what's doubling up is _him_.

"I need to tell you something," both of him say, and he feels like his mouth is moving without his conscious control, even though these are exactly the words he wants to say anyway, exactly what he'd half-planned if he ever got to this point again. "I just—I don't want to make this weird again, but I'm kind of in love with you."

He sees Brandon—eyes tired and pale gray-blue, ringed with exhaustion, the five o'clock shadow scruffy around his jaw and neck, flickering in and out, his hair at once trimmed short and starting to curl around his ears, the color of the wall behind him going from gray to cream—sees _both_ Brandons, overlaid into the same space for a heartbeat; the Brandon he remembers and is getting to know again, and the Brandon he's been in love with for years, the Brandon he needs to be with. It's not a conscious choice, as such, but Nick knows where he's supposed to be, and for whatever reason, that's the moment he can feel how to resolve this; the conscious effort to go back is somehow wholly instinctive, and he doesn't hesitate.

And then everything goes black.

* * *

2017

Nick sways a little on the couch—on his couch, holy fuck, he's home, he's _back_ —and Brandon's face comes into view, a little older and a little wiser and suddenly looking very concerned.

"Leds? Are you okay? You looked—weird." Brandon's troubled, and Nick will realize, later, from the way he phrased that that he must have seen something, must have seen whatever visual clue there was to indicate the way Nick had felt himself go blurry around the edges before passing out or whatever was involved in suddenly translating his consciousness forward three years and however many miles.

"I'm okay," he says, the words feeling a little rough and stale on his tongue. He's going to have to get used to this body again, although at least he has a lot more recent practice in that. "I—um. I missed you," he says, too overwhelmed to be anything but honest. "God, I missed you so much," and he drags Brandon closer, wraps his arms around him.

He can feel the way Brandon goes kind of stiff against him for a split second before melting into the hug, and he can feel Brandon's heart racing, beating so hard in his chest even through the fact they're both still dressed, and Brandon's hesitant when he starts to speak—without letting go of Nick, his hands curled into Nick's t-shirt, clutching him tight.

"I—are you _back_? Nick?"

"Yeah," Nick says, giddy. "I—you knew? Fuck, that's good, I don't have to explain—I mean, no, I do have to explain, this is all my fault and I'm so fucking sorry, but god, I missed you so much."

"I missed you too," Brandon says, a little pitifully, and Nick doesn't think you could separate the two of them just then with anything short of, well, violence. "And we're going to talk about this more later, but just—" and then he pulls back just far enough that he can see Nick's face, and then he kisses him, hard, possessively, desperately, everything Nick's been craving for the past two months.

It's not even a question, really; Nick kisses him back with everything he has, sinks into it, lets go of all the fears and worry he's been carrying around for weeks, at least for that moment.

Having Brandon so close and being able to touch him the way he's wanted to, the way he's _used_ to is sort of overwhelming, and Nick's dizzy with it, it makes him even less inhibited than he would usually be. He wraps his arms around Brandon and hauls him into his lap, keeps kissing him, hot and needy as Brandon tries to get his balance, tries to arrange himself better so he's perched over Nick, knees either side of his thighs, bringing their bodies together.

Nick gets his hands under Brandon's shirt to find bare skin, the back of his mind noting the differences and glorying in being able to do this again; his fingertips skating over soft skin and dark hair, his thumb finding Brandon's nipple, tight and hard at his touch and Nick rubs and pinches gently, making Brandon mumble curses against his mouth while his hips strain forward, trying to get them closer together.

The helpless arousal that's thudding through Nick's body with every beat of his pulse is making him feel reckless again—and wasn't that half the problem to start with, he thinks, trying to slow himself down, reminding himself that he can take his time, he's not going anywhere and neither is Brandon, not now, not again. He still wants to grind up against Brandon, is aching for a hand on his dick, but he can wait for that. What's more important is to show Brandon how much he missed him, how much he needs him.

"So good," Nick mumbles, when Brandon pulls back for a second to catch his breath, his eyes still closed, leaning in so his forehead is pressed against Nick's, holding them both steady.

"Yeah," Brandon says, his voice rough with suppressed emotion. "I—it's not that I don't want this, but I think we, uh. Need to take this slow."

Nick bites his lip, gives himself a second to think through his response.

"That's okay," he says, trying to find the right words. "I mean, it's—this is a weird situation."

Brandon opens his eyes again then, looking straight into Nick's and he looks relieved. That just makes Nick feel all of two feet tall all over again. This is probably the best part of his life, and he's fucked it up—at least, come incredibly close to entirely fucking this up, if nothing else—and the absolute last thing he wants to do is make that worse.

So yeah, he's going to let Brandon take the lead on things for a while.

"Yeah," Brandon says slowly, and then he bites his lip and seems to come to a decision.

That decision apparently involves him carefully getting out of Nick's lap—Nick tries not to desperately and immediately miss the solid weight of Brandon pinning him in place—and sitting beside him on the couch. At least his body is still inclined towards Nick's, his body language open, if cautious.

Nick's not out of the woods yet, but it's not as bad as it could have been, probably.

"I guess we need to talk," Nick says, and those words taste as awful as they have every other time he's said or heard them in a relationship.

"Do you—how much do you know about what happened?" Brandon asks. "You—the you from a few years ago, did you know that was how this was going to work out? He said that some of the guys you know told him you'd wound up back in 2013."

"I, um. Yeah, pretty much that," Nick admits.

Brandon's giving him a weird look, his expression shuttered in a way Nick hasn't seen from him before.

"Do you know how it happened?" Brandon asks. "Or why? Or—god, I don't know. If it was anyone else I'd assume they were just fucking with me, but you've never lied to me before." He pauses for a second and then corrects himself. "At least, not till recently."

Nick feels _that_ one go through him like a dagger.

And he can't really deny that he deserves it. Hell, he doesn't know what his younger self did here, and isn't that a mind fuck; for all he knows Nick's going to have to spend the rest of the year apologizing to everyone he's ever met. He kind of cares more about getting back on good terms with Brandon more than anyone else, though.

"I'm _sorry_ ," he says again, kind of desperately, and Brandon waves him past it with a quick flick of his wrist, a motion to let it go and keep moving forward right now, although the vaguely troubled look on Brandon's face is as good a hint as anything that he's not over it, either.

It's probably only fair that it's going to take some time, Nick can't complain about that.

"How long were you, um, gone?" Brandon asks, like he's not sure he wants to know the answer.

Nick's stomach drops as a whole set of newly horrifying possibilities occur to him. He has no idea if time passed the same in both places, what if he's been gone for years? What else happened while he was gone? Readjusting to his real life is going to be almost as hard as readjusting to his old life was. Maybe even more so; at least he could remember what things used to be like. His younger self must have just been dropped in head-first into Nick's life, and Nick's going to have almost no idea what happened to him, either. That's more than a little nauseating, now that he's thinking about it.

"It felt like six weeks?" he says carefully, feeling his way through the conversation. "I mean, I didn't count exactly, but it was definitely close to that. Maybe seven or eight." It had been sort of hard to keep track with their schedule what it had been, the weeks blurring together too easily.

Brandon nods slowly. "You didn't—he didn't—" he trails off for a moment, brows drawn together unhappily, and it makes Nick's heart ache. "I'm not sure how long it was here, but I think it was close to that."

"Right," Nick says slowly. He doesn't want to ask and at the same time he's kind of desperate to. "Uh, so I guess you didn't find out till lately, huh?"

Brandon looks away for a moment, dropping the eye contact they had been making, and his voice is artificially steady while simultaneously sounding more distant than Nick's ever heard him. "I found out a couple weeks ago."

"Oh," Nick says, a little lamely, but Brandon's still talking.

"Just before we were playing here," he clarifies, although Nick could probably have joined those dots for himself if he'd known exactly what the date is now. "A couple weeks after the Isles were in Columbus." There's absolutely nothing in his tone there to give away how he feels about that fact, and it makes Nick's blood run cold.

Because Nick should have known that. Because he'd known how close they were to playing the Jackets right before he'd gone to sleep and woken up back in Chicago, and he'd been driving himself crazy thinking about how instead of being fucked up and confused and totally adrift in time he could've been seeing his boyfriend and—oh, fuck.

Because Nick knows exactly how he would've reacted if he was still twenty two, and freaked out and confused and the guy he'd liked for years was suddenly on his doorstep, suddenly available, suddenly _interested_.

"Oh fuck," Nick whispers, barely audible.

Brandon looks at him at last, and Nick suddenly and abruptly understands just what emotion he's been trying to shove back down, trying to talk his way around and beyond. Brandon is absolutely furious, madder than Nick has ever seen him, and Nick never wants to put that look on his face ever again.

"You lied to me," he says, simply. Softly. _Hurt_. "I mean, I know it wasn't you, but—it kind of was, and I needed you and you weren't there and then it took weeks before I found out what the hell was going on."

"Oh god," Nick finds himself saying again, sick and guilty with it. "I never—I would never have done any of this on purpose, Brandon, I swear."

Brandon looks about as miserable as Nick feels.

"It just—" Brandon takes a shaky breath in, and seems to steady himself again. "I thought you were happy, or that we were, and then… all of this."

"I wasn't unhappy," Nick protests, "I swear, I just. I fucked up, I fucked up so badly. I'm _sorry_."

Brandon bites his lip and stretches his hands out, fingers spread wide, and Nick recognizes it after a moment as him trying to force himself to cool off, unclenching his fists, trying to physically force the tension out even if he couldn't think his way through it. Nick's not entirely sure whether it's guilt or shame that's clogging up his throat watching that, or even if it's some combination of the two. It sucks, whatever it is, and he wishes—

Well, no, he's probably not going to do that again if he can help it. Once was more than enough.

But even if he knows he's probably a better person for it, and maybe—hopefully—a better partner for Brandon because of it too… he regrets putting Brandon through any of this. Just because he was too selfish to realize how good he had it.

"Do you know what happened?" Brandon asks, after a moment. His voice is small, but steadier, and Nick needs to tell him this no matter what happens, no matter how it affects them. He just hopes it's not going to be a deal breaker after all.

"I'm not sure exactly how," Nick says. "I just—I kept thinking, in summer, after you went back to Pittsburgh and I was at home in Minneapolis—I kept remembering what it was like when it was our short summer and not the fucking Pens. And then the season started and we—we fucking sucked, I mean—you know—" he breaks off there, because reminding Brandon about 0-and-8 is probably not going to help his case then, but Brandon can probably guess his mind had gone there because he gives Nick an all-too-familiar grimace and gestures for him to keep talking.

"Anyway," Nick says, and god, it seems so completely stupid now that he's having to explain it to another person, although at least now he doesn't have to worry about telling Brandon things he shouldn't know, not like he had back in 2013. "I just—I kept finding myself thinking that I just—uh. I just wanted to win the Cup again. I wanted to remember what that _felt_ like and, I don't know, enjoy it more, I don't know."

Brandon's face is doing something that Nick can't entirely understand.

"You didn't enjoy it last time?" he asks, eyebrow raised.

Nick feels his cheeks go hot, blushing as he realizes exactly what he suspects Brandon is referring to.

"I liked that summer a lot," he says, half sheepish, half defensive. He doesn't fight the urge, this time, to reach up and smooth a strand of Brandon's hair back off his forehead, fingers lingering around his temple, so goddamn pleased and relieved to be able to touch Brandon again without second and third-guessing himself. "You're the best thing that ever happened to me, you know, there's no contest there. But it just kind of felt like, I don't know. Like I wasn't sure we'll ever get there in Brooklyn, and I just wanted it so bad."

Neither of them bring up the second Cup that Brandon won, the one Nick had to watch on TV, half-proud and half-sick about it, feeling acutely the way in which they'd all moved on and grown. There wasn't a space in Chicago where he fit anymore, and he was happy in New York, but it still hurt a little to watch his friends lift it again, and to not be there. Then again, apparently there hadn't been a space for Brandon two weeks later, either, so—Nick was really not keen to bring any of that up. But it hung over both of them for sure, unspoken but still a factor all the same.

"And so you figured you'd—time travel somehow?" Brandon gives him a skeptical look.

Nick prickles a little at that, it's not like he did this on purpose.

"I didn't think anything would happen!" he protests. "I just—we were walking around midtown after getting lunch, and Boych dragged us into this weird antique shop, and he told me to get my head out of my ass and stop moping," Brandon snorts a little at that, which Nick ignores. "And then while Boych was digging through a box of books the rest of us were just hanging around up front and kind of looking at these old toys they had. And, I dunno, I guess I must have touched something weird, but I just remember thinking, 'I miss Brandon and I wish we could win the Cup again.' "

Nick pauses for a moment. He'd remembered part of that just fine, had eventually put it together not all that long after landing back in 2013, because it was the only thing that made even a cockamamie kind of sense about the whole thing. You spend your whole career wanting to win one thing, it's hard not to wish you could win it every time. But until the words came out of his mouth just then, he'd kind of—conveniently forgotten about the first half of that statement.

No wonder he'd wound up back there, if that was what he'd been thinking. Talk about being careful what you wished for. And it could've been worse; he could see that easily enough. Could think of a thousand ways where he'd end up on Brandon's team, or vice versa, and they could win the Cup together again and still wind up hurt or miserable. He doesn't regret what he's figured out since this whole thing happened, although on the balance, Nick isn't sure he could actually say he'd do it all over again if he had to.

He'd rather not have had to miss Brandon for weeks on end while panicking about whatever the hell was going on even if he did feel like it was going to make him a better person now.

"So you didn't—you had no idea this was going to happen?" Brandon asks.

"No!" Nick replies instantly, and it hurts that Brandon even needs to ask, although Nick probably deserves that, too.

"You didn't—talk to someone, or ask for it?" Brandon presses, and Nick's not sure what he's getting at, because he just said—and then it dawns on him, and Nick can't help but roll his eyes for a moment.

"Brandon. I didn't—I didn't fucking make a wish on a magic lamp or something, okay? There was no one there, no genie, nothing, I just had what I thought was a random thought, and then I went home and went to bed and woke up _there_."

Brandon has the grace to look a little bit sheepish as Nick keeps talking, his shoulders going up around his ears, body language still more closed-off than Nick would prefer.

"Sorry," he says, voice low, still not quite looking at Nick, and _that_ hurts.

Not as much as it does that he thinks Nick would ever choose to leave him behind or—ahead, whatever, Nick's not going to pretzel his brain around figuring out how to explain all the chronology there. But if he'd known that idle wish—heartfelt as it might've been—would take him right out of his life, well. He wouldn't have wanted to go without Brandon.

Although possibly that's something he should tell _Brandon_.

"Saader," he starts, and then corrects himself, feeling a little too much like he's still dealing with that other Brandon, the one who's newer and less sure of himself and not as close to Nick, and who he was still kind of in love with all the same, because Nick's steady and reliable and once he knows his own mind he doesn't tend to change it. It was easy to see how he'd fallen so hard for Brandon even back then, with just the the seeds of their relationship starting to take root. "I wouldn't have chosen that, not if I knew it could really happen. If I thought anything like that could happen I—" he pauses for a moment, but forges ahead after a moment. It's not like this is going to be the worst thing he could do or say just now. "If I knew something like fucking _magic_ was on the table, you'd be in an Islanders jersey right now."

Brandon blinks at him, and then nods, ever so slightly.

"That, uh. Wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, I guess," he says. "Or you could be a Jacket," and he lets that dangle just long enough for Nick to imagine it, not that there's room for him anywhere on their blue line. The idea of Brandon on JT's wing, however, is one Nick's maybe going to take out again some time later and imagine, because that's fucking hot. Even if he's wise enough to know it'll almost definitely never happen.

"Yeah," Nick says slowly. "That—wouldn't be terrible either, I guess."

They both pause and just look at each other for a few moments, the room no longer feeling quite so close and suffocating as it had done. Nick's smart enough to know they've only barely touched on most of their problems right now, but it feels better already, even just getting that much out. He feels like he might fit here again, at any rate.

And that just makes him wonder, although it's probably a tall order to be asking this of Brandon, "So, uh. What'd I miss, here? Fuck, _when_ is it? I don't even know what day it is."

He realizes then that he still has no idea when it is, how much time he's lost, whether time passed the same here as it did back in the past. Hell, if Brandon hadn't said he knew Nick had switched, well, Nick's not sure he would've assumed much time at all had passed. God, what if it's been longer than he thought he was away for? That sets up an uneasy feeling in his stomach, makes him feel vaguely seasick despite the fact he's sitting perfectly still on solid ground.

"You never know what day it is," Brandon teases automatically, before catching himself and looking deeply uncomfortable. "I mean, uh, it's. January. The 23rd. We're playing you guys tomorrow, actually. That's, uh, why I'm here."

"Right," Nick says slowly, trying to fit his brain around all of that.

It's been—almost two months. So pretty close to the same amount of time he'd been in the past, which—would make sense, if any of this made sense. Nick's never thought of himself as the sort of person that crazy shit like this happens to, and look how wrong he was about that.

And, fuck, that means he missed—their trip to Columbus, and Christmas, or at least checking in with his folks for the holiday, and—so many other things, things he's going to have to fake like he's forgotten or pretend like he was there. This is so goddamn awkward.

"I guess I'm gonna be doing a lot of googling shit," Nick says eventually. "Uh, I guess I didn't get sent down to Bridgeport or whatever either, so that's… good."

Brandon blinks at him. "Why would you—?"

Nick laughs, humorlessly, then has to stop and clear his throat. "I guess he—the other me?—adjusted faster than I did? I don't know if you remember, but the beard's not the only thing that's changed since I was in Chicago."

Brandon goes suspiciously quiet, and faintly pink in the face, which Nick's going to take as a yes.

"But yeah, it took me a couple days to feel really comfortable. And I got away with that on the third d-pair, but I bet Cappy wasn't so thrilled if I sucked all of a sudden."

"Uhh," Brandon says, looking deeply uncomfortable. "About that."

Nick blinks at him. "Shit, _did_ I get benched or something?"

God, forget googling everything, Nick's going to have to watch like 8 weeks worth of game tape somehow, while also still playing hockey and pretending like nothing different is going on in his life at all. But he has to know what he did over the last couple of weeks, and he should check whether they've managed to claw their way back into the playoff bubble again, because he's not going to get much chance of reading the room if all they're doing before the game tomorrow is an optional skate.

Which Nick will be taking, he's not going to assume he'll just snap back into place on the ice here, either.

"Um," Brandon says, his hand going to his pocket like he's about to pull out his phone. He stops before doing that though, takes a deep breath and says, very neutrally. "Cappy didn't bench you. At least, not that I saw or heard. But he got fired last week, and Weight's taking over for the rest of the season."

Nick's not sure what to do with this information, just feels like it's echoing in his ears, prompting a series of thoughts which feel curiously untethered from his emotions. Cappy's gone. And Dougie's taking over. Which, fine, Nick likes him, respects him, but—

They've been bad enough _to get their coach fired_.

Jesus. Nick's been through some slumps over the years, but he's never had _this happen._

"Fuck," he says.

"Yeah," Brandon agrees.

"We— _fuck_. How many did we lose?" Nick's not really expecting Brandon to come back with an answer, it's more of a rhetorical question, and this time when Brandon reaches out to clasp his shoulder it's purely a gesture of comfort, affection, nothing more. Nick appreciates it all the same.

"If it's any consolation you're not, uh, dead last any more?" Brandon says.

If it hadn't been for last year, Nick might have bristled at that, just a little, coming from Brandon. But Brandon's been there now too, and, well. Maybe Nick's not entirely sad about having missed most of the last couple of weeks. It can't have been much fun to live through.

Although maybe they would've done better if he'd been there, if he'd been fully himself, instead of a probably-freaked out twenty two year old kid who'd been dumped headfirst into Nick's current life. Nick's honest enough to know that his younger self might not have handled that great. He has to have done a reasonable job, though, or Nick would be in much more trouble himself right now.

"How long have you known about," Nick gestures around the mostly empty living room—much cleaner than he usually keeps it—and hopes Brandon can correctly translate that as his whole…situation, whatever it is. "All of this."

Unaccountably, Brandon looks away, breaking the eye contact that had started to feel comfortable and familiar again, and Nick feels the ground metaphorically lurch under his feet.

"A…couple weeks," he admits.

"Right," Nick says slowly.

He didn't want to tell anyone where he was, he can sympathize with that, and he's not even all that surprised that apparently both versions of him eventually confessed to Brandon. It's a little weird, though, because while they're not exactly that couple that's attached at the hip and can't go more than a few hours without speaking to each other, he and Brandon do talk regularly enough, and he can't imagine his younger self had known how to keep that conversation going. Especially since he would've had no idea that he was talking to his boyfriend and not his—friend. Ex-teammate. God, that must've been a shock. Nick's going to be feeling guilty about this whole thing for a while; for himself and for Brandon and for family and his team—but also for his younger self.

That other Nick never asked for any of this, and for all Nick knows he's dumped him back into a situation in his own life where he's going to have to keep all of this information locked away in his head, where the way he sees a lot of people is going to have changed, irreparably. And that's not even going near the thought which makes Nick freak out even to imagine for more than a second: what if the sheer fact of what he knows now-or something that Nick did, thoughtlessly, while he was back there, trying to stay inside every one of his old footsteps without rocking the boat—what if that changed things for him. For everyone.

Nick's always thought that whole butterfly wings into a hurricane thing was a little on the nose, but he can't deny it's going to weigh on him for a while.

Not intending any of this to happen doesn't do a whole lot to fix the fact that it had.

"I think he left you some notes," Brandon says, filling in the silence.

He's still not looking at Nick, and as much as Nick's suddenly desperate to go find whatever it was the other Nick left for him, he doesn't want to waste any of the time he's got with Brandon. It's not like he's going to have a chance to see him again for another month or so at least, if he's remembering the schedule correctly. And it's not like he's even sure of that; he's had so much information to juggle recently that he wouldn't want to bet on that.

"I'll, uh, look at that soon, I guess," Nick says.

The silence stretches out again, and Nick's newly aware of just how awkwardly he's sitting, overly tense in trying not to lean too much into Brandon's personal space. He shifts his weight a little, tries to sit more naturally again, leaning back against the back of the couch.

It's not really want he wants to do—he wants to plaster himself to Brandon and not let go for at least a week, but he's realistic enough to know that it's the last thing he should try to do right now. Brandon looks somewhere between relieved and disappointed, too, and that's a tiny victory at least. Nick hasn't entirely and wholly screwed this up after all.

"How long can you stay today?" Nick asks, once he's collected himself enough to work out just what he can deal with right then and there. Talking to Brandon some more is definitely on that list. And he's probably going to call his parents soon too, since he's pretty sure the other Nick would also have not wanted to worry them and thus just ducked as many calls as possible. It's been awhile since he's talked to them in either timeline, anyhow.

"You've got me for a couple more hours," Brandon assures him, and Nick thinks—for the first time in a long time—that maybe everything is going to be okay after all.

* * *

2013

Nick blinks, feeling dizzy, and everything goes upside down and whirls around him and then he's back on his couch—his couch, his actual couch, that he remembers looking at online and picking out, right there in the Chicago apartment that he only got to enjoy for, like, two and a half weeks before everything got so fucked up and turned around, and he almost fist-pumps automatically before realizing that he's not actually alone here, either.

That Brandon—his Brandon, too sensible and smart for his years, still a rookie, not entirely grown into his face or his body yet no matter what his nickname is Brandon—is still sitting right there next to him. Staring at him, even.

"What just happened?" Brandon asks, trying to look stone-faced and calm and succeeding mostly only in just looking freaked out. "You were—you said you were in _love_ with me, and then you went all blurry and I swear to god if Shawzy bought magic mushrooms or something I'm going to kill both of you."

"Shawzy wouldn't buy magic mushrooms," Nick replies automatically, "he hates mushrooms," and then the rest of what Brandon had said registers and he stops dead, tries not to panic just a little.

It's not as if he wasn't about to have almost exactly this conversation with Brandon back in 2017 and—oh, maybe that explains more than it doesn't. Fuck, Nick's never going to be able to tell anyone about this. Except for Brandon and maybe also the guys back home, since they know half of it anyway. They can just lie to him in the future if they need to, right? He's pretty sure that's not going to cause a universe-destabilizing paradox.

"But, uh. I kind of am, yeah. In love with you."

"Oh," Brandon says, and he looks—

A little pole-axed, but also a little pleased. "I like you a lot too," he says, almost too earnestly.

"Do you-um, has stuff been kind of… weird here?" Nick asks, because as much as he kind of wants to just jump Brandon right then and there—and it looks like Brandon's probably going to be okay with that too, even better—but he'd decided weeks ago that if and when this happened he was going to be honest first, and he should probably stick by that.

"Weird might be an understatement," Brandon says. "You've been all, I don't know. Extra quiet, lately."

Nick raises an eyebrow.

Brandon shrugs at him. "Shawzy wasn't too worried, but I could tell something was off, you know? But you kept saying you didn't want to talk about it so, well, we let you keep doing your thing."

"Right," Nick says slowly. "Well, uh. This is going to sound crazy, but I swear it's true."

Brandon gives him a crooked grin, the corner of his mouth twitching up. "I just saw—well, after what I just saw, I'm probably gonna believe you, Leds."

Nick takes a deep breath, and prepares to explain for the second time. It's not actually getting any easier, which seems unfair, honestly. As if he hasn't had enough to deal with recently.

"Okay, so, the last thing I remember here? Is, like. Beating the Blues. In January."

Nick pauses to take in Brandon's expression. He'd startled when Nick mentioned the date, and that reminds him—

"Uh, when is it now?"

"It's March," Brandon replies instantly. "It— _January_? Fuck, Leds, that's—I'm pretty sure that's the sort of problem they invented MRIs for."

Brandon looks more worried now than he had done when Nick had started to blurt out his confession of feelings, which is either flattering or just another thing for _Nick_ to worry about. He has to cut that idea off at the pass, though.

"No, it's not—I didn't lose time. Or, I guess I kind of did, but not the way you're thinking. Um, I kind of." He pauses, and there really isn't any better way to say this, so he just bulls through it. "I kind of time-traveled?"

Brandon raises an eyebrow at him but doesn't interrupt.

"I-actually, I shouldn't tell you too much, I guess, but I woke up and it wasn't 2013 any more. It was really fucking confusing, and I kind of freaked out but I ended up working out what was happening with, uh, some help. And I guess what happened was I—me from the future, that is—he wound up back here. With you."

Brandon looks slightly sick imagining that, but also a little fascinated, his eyes wide as he worries at his lip, teeth dug into it. Nick tries not to find it cute, but that's another losing battle.

"And so I've kind of been living his life for the past couple of months, and hopefully he hasn't fucked up my life either…?"

Nick lets that trail off invitingly, and Brandon's as quick as ever to read his cues.

"I—okay, I wouldn't have guessed this," Brandon says. "I could tell something was different but I don't think most people would, you know? You've been playing pretty well, too."

Nick preens at that, even though he can't exactly take the credit. Hopefully he learned some stuff in 2017 that he can use to his advantage for the rest of the season. And—fuck, he's going to get the rest of the season. He's going to—

He can't even let himself think about that too much, just in case something changes. In case something messes it up. Can't even let his thoughts get in touching distance of the Cup until and unless he's about to get his hands on it for real. And he really can't tell Brandon, as much as he wants to.

"Cool," Nick says, and hopes nothing he was thinking is showing on his face. "Anyway, I guess what just happened, is, uh. We switched back."

Brandon meets his eyes and nods slowly. He doesn't look like he's going to run screaming, or like he's about to drag Nick to a hospital, so that's basically a win in and of itself.

"It looked like there were two of you," he says eventually. "Just for a couple seconds, and it was fuzzy, but—yeah. I don't know if I'd believe you if it was anyone else telling me this, and if I hadn't seen that, but—I believe you."

Nick relaxes all at once, realizing he'd been more tense than he'd quite wanted to admit. If he's going to build something with Brandon now, they have to be as honest as they can be moving forward, he's learned that lesson well enough. So Brandon believing him is a big deal, it's important. And Nick can't deny it makes him feel warm all through how easily Brandon had offered him that trust.

"It was fucking weird," Nick admits, with a short laugh. "Also, I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I missed everyone here. Even living with Shawzy, if you can believe it."

"Well, now I'm worried about whether you hit your head recently," Brandon jokes right back, and then his expression smooths out to neutral again when he reaches out hesitantly and lays his hand on Nick's forearm, fingertips brushing over the delicate skin of Nick's wrist.

Nick holds his breath for a second, and wonders whether it's a coincidence that Brandon must be able to feel the way his pulse is thumping at double time, the blood beating under his skin, right by his fingers.

"And about that, um, other thing," Nick says, feeling like he's hearing himself speak from the far end of a tunnel, his voice feeling small and uneven, too vulnerable like this. "That wasn't, uh, just the time travel speaking. I'd kinda like to date you, Saader."

Brandon's hand tightens on Nick's wrist and he sits up straighter. "Well, if you ask, I'm gonna say yes." He's blushing ever so slightly, however steady his voice is. Like he wants this and he's a little surprised by his own bravery, if Nick's making a guess about it.

It's more of a relief than Nick expected it to be; it's not like he doesn't have the best evidence in the world that there's one Brandon Saad out there in all the worlds who wants to be with him, but he's definitely happy there's at least two.

"Cool," Nick says, lost for any better words. They both grin at each other for a few seconds. Nick should maybe start asking a few more questions about everything he's missed out on, just so that he doesn't do anything colossally stupid now that he is back where he belongs again, but there'll be time for all of that later.

Time for a lot of things later.

But there's one thing Nick doesn't want to wait any longer for. And he has a funny feeling that the first time he kisses Brandon for real wasn't just memorable because it'd come after the Cup. Nick's not going to wait to see what else changes in his future first, he's going to take the information he has and make the best life he can from it. Brandon's worth the risk. He always has been.

"Hey, Brandon?" he says. "I've kind of been wanting to do this forever," and he leans in, slowly, giving Brandon all the time he might need to pull back if he wants to.

He doesn't.

In the best way possible, it feels like time stops.

Nick grins against Brandon's mouth, lifts his hand up to cradle his jaw and hold him closer, and lets himself just enjoy the moment.

They can figure out everything else later.

* * *  
2017

Figuring things out takes more than a few hours, in the end. Nick's not all that surprised; he kind of expected that much, at least. It takes a lot more conversation then, and phone calls and messages whenever they can fit them into their schedules, rebuilding what they have and reestablishing what they're going to be.

They're on the phone one afternoon, late sun streaming in Nick's kitchen windows, starting to turn towards spring at last, even with snow on the ground when Brandon asks, like it had only just occurred to him, "Did you?"

Nick blinks, and drinks some more of his tea, stretches his legs out under the table and wishes Brandon was sitting on the other side of it, so Nick could prod his bare ankle with the toe of his socks, the kind of dumb flirty foreplay that's all the more fun for how close it is to just being a pest.

"Did I do what?" he asks. They'd been reminiscing about how much better the Thai takeout near Brandon's old apartment was than what either of them can get now, although mostly Nick can't be bothered trying to order from anywhere further away to see if there are some better options out there after all.

"Win the Cup again," Brandon says. "You—that was why you went back, right? You wanted to do that."

Nick doesn't even have to pause before answering that, the words rising to his lips as easily as if he'd practiced them, like he's just sharing a truth he's known for weeks even if he hadn't exactly thought of it in those terms yet.

"No," he says. "I didn't—I came back. You're more important. I don't even know if he will, I might have changed too much, who knows how it even works. But I knew I wanted to be here more than anything."

There's silence on the other end of the phone line for a few seconds. "Oh," is all Brandon says then, but Nick fancies he can guess just what expression is on his face all the way over in Ohio.

They change the subject and move on.

* * *

"—so Hickey keeps mentioning this prank story I told at dinner and I still haven't worked out just which one it was, which is kind of awkward," Nick's saying a week or so later, phone jammed between his shoulder and his ear while he walks back to his apartment, juggling a bag of groceries in his other hand. Normally, he’d just get them delivered, but it was nice out, for late winter, and he doesn’t mind the walk.

"As long as he doesn't want to recreate it you're probably fine," Brandon advises, and Nick snorts. He's not wrong.

"I'm impressed they got him talking long enough to share whatever it was that Sharpy did," Brandon adds. "I'd kind of forgotten how quiet you used to be back then. I guess that should've been a big hint that something was weird a lot sooner than I knew, huh?"

"For the sake of the rookies I hope it's not any of Sharpy's favorite pranks," Nick replies automatically, and then his brain catches up with the rest of what Brandon's saying. "Huh, you really think I've changed a lot now?"

Brandon pauses before answering, though Nick figures it's more to put his thoughts in order than anything else.

"Yes and no," he says. "I mean, I guess you're still pretty quiet a lot of the time, but you speak up more than you used to."

"I guess it takes one to know one," Nick replies, and they both laugh. "Comments like that are why they used to called you manchild, by the way," and Nick definitely doesn't need video to know that Brandon's rolling his eyes at that.

"When do you guys get into town next week anyway?" Brandon asks, and the conversation shifts to Nick trying to pull up his schedule without dropping the eggs he's just bought, working out just how soon they'll get to see each other in person again.

Nick can't deny he's looking forward to it.

* * *

There's something immensely relieving about how familiar Brandon's place in Columbus is, Nick thinks, walking up the driveway with the last of the snow scraped off the path crunching under his feet, his duffel thumping at his side with every step he takes.

It just feels right to be there, where he knows how he and Brandon fit together, where they've made a lot of memories that are just of and for them, almost insulated from both the good and the bad. It feels good when Brandon swings the door open in a spill of light and warmth to let him inside just as he reaches the porch, and feels even better again when he drops his bag beside the door just in time to wrap his arms around Brandon and kiss him again for the first time in weeks.

The kiss heats up more than Nick's expecting it to, and he forgets every good intention he'd had of taking Brandon out for a nice dinner, or at least of not pressuring him for more than maybe just some kissing. He's breathless by the time they break apart at last, and Nick opens his mouth to ask if Brandon wants to take this upstairs already, since that feels like the bedroom is where they're inevitably heading, and god, Nick can't wait.

And this time it's Brandon who yanks the rug out from under his feet, talking right over top of Nick before he can get the words out.

"I, uh. I have to tell you something, too," Brandon says, his breath coming slightly too fast, and Nick can't quite tell if that's nerves or arousal or both.

He stuffs his hands in his pockets and waits for Brandon to spit it out, tries not to let himself fidget too obviously with the contents.

"It's not bad," Brandon rushes to reassure him, "I mean, at least it's not supposed to be bad."

"You're not doing that good a job of convincing me it's not," Nick points outs.

Brandon barks a laugh and says, "Sorry. I just. Uh, you knew I slept with you, right?"

Nick would ask Brandon if he'd had some kind of head injury lately, but after a second he gets it, understands both the question and the awkward phrasing.

"I…kind of assumed," he says.

"Oh," Brandon says. "I mean, good? I think? You're taking this a lot better than I did."

Nick shrugs one shoulder, grimaces. "I asked myself what I would've done in that situation and, uh. Apparently I did, huh?" It's not like he's proud of that fact.

"We argued about it, when he told me what had happened," Brandon says slowly, and Nick shifts his weight back on his heels, waits patiently for him to get all of it out. There's a pent-up pressure behind his words that suggests it's been weighing on his mind even now, after they've switched back and everything is supposed to be back to normal. "I don't know if he really understood—but I think you will, um. It wasn't that he wasn't you, or at least it wasn't just that."

Nick nods, lets his thumbs press into Brandon's skin, rubbing slow circles just above where his hands have settled at his hips.

"It was that he wasn't you, and I couldn't tell, I should have known so much sooner." He looks almost guilty, and fuck, Nick's the one who messed up here, not Brandon.

"Hey," Nick protests. "No, you—don't beat yourself up over that part. This was my fault to start with. And if I was him—I mean, I guess I am, but you know what I mean—I might've even done the same thing. God knows I understand the temptation, even though yeah, that was a dick move that he lied to you about that."

"Excuse me?" Brandon says. "I mean, we're not having the fight about why that was dumb of him again, I already did that. But why would he-I mean, he didn't know we were together. He could've hooked up with anyone else, before or after, and he didn't, it was just—me."

Brandon's frowning at him, gaze a little distant like he's seeing Nick standing right there in front of him, but like he's preoccupied with something else, too. Someone else. Small wonder that other Nick had gotten under Brandon's skin just as much as he'd gotten under Nick's, really.

Nick shrugs, the answer obvious to him at least. "Well, I have been in love with you forever, so."

Brandon freezes for a moment and says, "Wait what", so deadpan it's almost not even a question.

"It's not the first time we've said that," Nick says.

"It's the first time you said forever," Brandon protests.

"…oh," Nick says. So much for all his good intentions about personal growth and not taking Brandon for granted and asking him how he feels more often. He probably should've included telling Brandon how he felt, too. "Yeah, I kind of—yeah. How about you? How long have you wanted to do this?"

Brandon pulls him closer again and kisses him hard, hot and demanding enough that that would be sufficient answer even by itself.

He does find the words a little later, though, breaking apart just long enough to catch his breath before saying, "It's been about that long for me too."

"Oh, good," Nick says, a little giddily. The tiny bag in his pocket seems to weigh ten times as much all of a sudden, and Nick thinks: he might never get a more perfect moment than this one.

Nick thinks: he's learned his lesson about waiting for a more perfect moment, thank you very much.

Nick lets go of Brandon with one hand and tugs the little velvet bag out of his pocket, the shape of the metal inside solid through the fabric, pressing into his finger joints as he curls his palm around to hide it for just a few seconds longer.

Nick licks his lips, swallows, and finds his voice remarkably steady as he says, "I wanted to do this with the Cup, but even if we win this year it's too long to wait so, uh, how do you feel about marriage?"

Brandon is silent for a moment, staring, stunned, but when he realizes what Nick's proposing— _that_ Nick's proposing—fuck, the way his eyes light up at that might be just as good as a yes.

"I don't know, I guess it works for a lot of people," Brandon says, apparently compelled to be a smartass at the worst possible time. Nick jabs his thumb into Brandon's side and says, "You asshole, you know what I'm actually asking."

He's pretty sure he's going to like the answer, doesn't need to know the future to guess where this conversation is going to go, and he's proven right when Brandon caves, too happy to tease him for any longer. Brandon just beams at him before saying, "Yes," and then hurriedly adding, "I mean, yes, I know what you mean but also— _yes._ "

It's the best thing Nick's heard all year; that yes ringing in his ears, and he'll take that and the ring he's gonna put on Brandon's finger over any other kind of ring, any day.

* * *


	2. [coda]

25th June, 2013

 

"Fuck you, you knew this was going to happen," Brandon says half-accusingly, half-laughing, his breath beer-sour as he leans heavily into Nick, the two of them more or less holding each other up by that point.

There has been… a lot of beer. Most of it poured out of the Cup. It's been just as awesome as Nick always imagined it would be.

Nick's pretty sure they got out of a cab, and he doesn't think they did anything unspeakable in it, but it's going to take them a few minutes to get inside Brandon's building given where their collective motor skills are at after being awake all night, and drinking, and all of that coming hard on the heels of a tough, draining game that never looked like it was going to go their way until the literal last fucking minute.

But parts of Nick's brain are still working, still ticking over, and that comment confirms what he'd suspected since he got back to his own time; neither version of him told Brandon about the Cup after all. Nick has seen too many movies to think that was a good idea at any point, and apparently his older self was just as careful.

"Would it have felt this good if you'd known?" Nick points out, in the interminable wait for the elevator. "I wasn't going to take it for granted. Plus, we could have fucked it up somehow, anyway."

He doesn't have to be a mind reader to know they're both thinking about Detroit again.

When Nick had been doing the panicked, worried-about-amnesia research he'd done that first day he'd spent in the future he hadn't exactly looked too closely into _how_ they'd won the Cup, just that they had. So even he had had some moments of doubt during the second round, had lain awake wondering if it was his fault for changing things.

He couldn't even play dumb about what he had changed, because he'd spent more time in Brandon's apartment than his own for the latter half of the season, right up until they'd all been moved into hotels even for the home games.

"I guess," Brandon says, and then he nuzzles at the side of Nick's throat, hardly able to find skin underneath all the layers of sweat and beard and half-dried Bud Light that's probably permeated every item of clothing that Nick's wearing and half of what's stuffed into his duffel bag back where ever it was that they'd left their luggage before getting on the charter.

Nick is _really_ looking forward to being able to shave. And shower. Although that might have to wait until they’re getting ready for the Parade. Fuck, they’re getting a parade.

And that reminds him—

"Hey, I can tell you this now," he says, half into Brandon's hair.

Brandon seems to be very distracted in trying to leave hickeys on every part of Nick he can reach, and it's not like Nick's particularly invested in stopping him.

"Or we could do this first," he adds, and lets Brandon drag him into the apartment and back to his bedroom.

They fall into bed and have tipsy just-won-the-Cup sex, all fumbling and messy and awkward, hardly even undressed enough to make it count, but just enough to feel incredibly good. That's just as good as Nick's been imagining and hoping for the last couple of months, too.

Afterward, they're lying there panting and sweating, and probably about ten seconds away from passing out at long last when Brandon rouses enough to roll onto his side and ask Nick, "Hey, what were you going to tell me before?"

Nick blinks at him for a moment before the relevant information comes back to mind, and he says, "Oh, just—now it's all happened, I was gonna say, uh, I talked to you—the older you, that is, and he told me how we first got together."

Brandon raises an eyebrow encouragingly.

"Apparently we kissed after the Cup win, and then kind of, uh, hooked up in the back of my car after the parade." Nick pauses for a moment. "It was apparently memorable."

"Huh," Brandon says, and he thinks for a moment, before smiling at Nick again, the soft, crooked smile that lights up his whole face, his gaze warmly affectionate, possessive, satisfied. "I'm glad we didn't wait for that this time," he says eventually.

Nick blinks. He'd actually felt like he was being selfish, almost; wanting Brandon too much to wait, even if it meant they didn't have such a memorable beginning, even if it meant they weren't always and forever going to be tangled up with this win, this team, this time.

"It would've killed me to spend that long trying to keep my hands off you once I knew you were interested," Brandon confesses, with a tiny shrug. "And besides, I'm glad we had all that time to practice, we're much better at sex now."

Well, Nick can't argue with _that_.

[-end-]

**Author's Note:**

> A character in the story does not remember starting a relationship with another character, but consents to sex with him without disclosing this memory loss first; there are consequences for this choice. A character thinks he has amnesia (but does not).


End file.
